The Browser as Access or Dial Tone

We are getting ready to head to Miami Jan.31 to Feb. 3 for ITEXPO and the TMC/Crossfire events. One general session I highly recommend on Jan^. 31 at 2p.m that is free to anyone registered for any of the shows is Post POTS Net Neutrality & the Cloud: From POTS to PANS.

Rumors of the death of POTS is not exaggerated. The Internet is the connecting glue for the public to share thoughts socially and privately. If we are going to build a new model for the future we have to determine the bottlenecks. While many people are clear that its time to kill the regulatory rules of POTS and move people to the next generation of the Internet, this discussion is about the Public Access Neutral Solutions (PANS). We will talk about the impact of the cloud and the migration from end-to-end to any services; about supporting access and quality of service; about Net Neutrality and privacy. And we will ask what is the right framework for the future of communication.

Speakers include Dr. Hossein Eslambochi, Jiri Kuthan, Richard Shockey and James Tagg. 

The most interesting thing about this session is it features all engineers and no lawyers or regulators. While 90 percent of the time I side with my partners at the VON Coalition, WCAI and WISPA on the issues impacting Telecom, when it comes to Net Neutrality I start to twitch. Nothing makes me crazier than to hear a rant about a company that no longer exists like AT&T’s Bell System, and for people to point to a ghost of network’s past.

So instead, we are going to focus not on the end of POTS, but what comes next. I am advocating that we call the Public Access Neutral Solutions. I do this for a few reasons.

I think Access is no longer the problem for many of us. While Senator Hutchison talks about the unserved and underserved, I see a great many of us having more than one access method to the Internet. I could make the case that my house could easily be turned into a Network Access Point with a Session Controller designed to manage the Border between my wireline, wireless, tablet and M2M solutions in the house.

I don’t fear the access points, I worry about the browser and the bottleneck that I have with certain companies that are in charge of my experience and worse insert themselves with cookies to “help” me. 

Here is what I wrote to the team.

My thought is about QoS and DiffServ vs. Best Effort.  Best Effort continues to be an undefined term.  And carriers still want differentiated services.  So what specifically is Net Neutrality looking to accomplish?  Does "Must Carry" on best effort suffice?  What is the pressure of CDNs and the Cloud on access?  For example is it possible for a CDN on best effort to out perform a carrier's differentiated service?  Is it possible for Amazon’s AWS to become complimentary to one access method and suck for a competitor?  These are the kind of questions I am curious about.  I have had a rough time with Net Neutrality especially when Apple delays Google and AT&T is blamed. 

Among our speakers are some well-stated public opinions. As a precursor to the event you may want to read Dr. Hossein Eslambochi’s, Light Reading article Transparency and Fairness vs. Net Neutrality.

Richard Shockey participated in the PSTN transition.

Jiri Kuthan is the developer of SIP Express Router, which probably has a bit of legacy code in 80 percent of our implementations.

James Tagg is the CTO of Tru, which is working to make cellular a true user-managed experience.

In the show Babylon 5 episode the River of Souls, Martin Sheen has the great line, “We weren’t dying we were evolving.” Come find out what POTS evolves into in Miami.