Will Joost be goosed and noosed by anti-net neutrality forces?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 18 January 2007 16:20

Opinion and Analysis

By all accounts, Joost is the Internet TV revolution we’ve all been waiting for. But will the phone and TV companies who own the networks try to block it like some want to do with Skype?

Last year a friend was in a New York hotel, and we tried having a Skype conversation. Sure, he appeared on Skype, we could text each other simply and easily. But when we had an actual conversation – we him in New York and me in Sydney, Australia – the audio was horrifically choppy. It wasn’t like Skype at all!

It was at that point that I remembered recently reading an article on some hotels deliberately interfering with Skype traffic. Why? So the guests wouldn’t be able to use Skype, and instead of using their cell phones, might decide to give up and use the hotel’s super expensive in-room phone system.

After all, everyone who’s ever been in a hotel and foolishly made a phone call from the supplied phone has come to regret it once it came time to pay the bill. Hotels used to upgrade their phone systems all the time – after all, it would be paid for in 3 months or less due to the incredible amounts of money they would be raking in from every call.

But when cell phones started becoming mainstream, it was cheaper to make that call right on your cell phone – even though a cell phone call cost more than a regular call from your home or office landline.

Now, the same thing is happening with Skype in some hotels. I’ve only ever come across this problem once, but it’s all part of the big ‘net neutrality’ debate. In short, this revolves around Internet Service Providers, many of whom are phone and cable TV companies, not liking the idea of services like Skype travelling across their network without some kind of tariff being paid – especially if they are taking away phone revenue.

The debate still rages in the US, with big companies like Google backing the stance of net neutrality, where no extra fees are paid, and big phone companies trying to impose ‘quality of service’ to guarantee their own products and services, while competitors travel across the network with no such quality guarantees and could face slowdowns or could even have access blocked – unless a fee was paid.

Well, with all the talk about Joost over the past few days, the question has to be asked: what do the traditional free-to-air, phone, cable and satellite TV companies think about it? Phone and cable TV companies, who can be the same company in a given market, could see their network being used to deliver television that they get no advertising revenue from whatsoever, as it is going direct to Joost.

Let’s make one thing clear: I love the idea of Joost. Heck, give me a Joost enabled iPhone with cream and a cherry on top and I think I’ll be in geek heaven. I want Joost to succeed, and I don’t want any phone or TV companies trying to block it or charge extra for it.

But if the debate on net neutrality continues to rage, with telcos and TV companies offering Internet service wanting to prioritize their own content at the expense of competitors, where does this leave Joost?

Of course, the professional TV and movie production companies that will be offering their content to Joost will be very unhappy if their huge new market is being deliberately damaged by their other distribution partners, the cable TV companies.

I hope there’s a simple answer, but given that Joost is still in a beta phase, the truth of what will eventually happen is not only being planned, it’s still yet to play itself out.

It’ll be one show that’ll certainly be worth watching!