[Infowarrior] - Is AT&T playing gatekeeper to the Wireless Web?

[Richard Forno]

  June 18, 2009 5:07 PM PDT
Is AT&T playing gatekeeper to the Wireless Web?
by Marguerite Reardon
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10268319-94.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0

AT&T's decision to allow Major League Baseball fans to stream games  
live onto their iPhones while restricting video streaming using  
another video application has one advocacy group crying foul.

With the release of the 3.0 version of Apple's iPhone operating system  
this week, subscribers to a popular application from Major League  
Baseball called At Bat will now get the chance to stream live video  
feeds of baseball games directly to their iPhones or iPod Touches. The  
first game was streamed Thursday afternoon, featuring a match up  
between the Chicago Cubs and White Sox.

But unlike other video streaming applications, such as SlingPlayer,  
the MLB At Bat live video can be accessed regardless of whether a  
subscriber is connected to the Internet via AT&T's 3G network or a Wi- 
Fi connection.

The SlingPlayer app, which allows iPhone users to redirect cable and  
broadcast TV from their TVs at home to their iPhones, is only  
permitted by AT&T to operate over a Wi-Fi connection. When the  
SlingPlayer application was first released last month, AT&T said that  
it restricted the application to Wi-Fi because streaming live  
broadcast TV over its 3G wireless network "violated the company's  
terms of use."

But now AT&T is allowing MLB to do exactly what it would not allow  
Sling to do, which is stream live broadcast TV over its 3G cellular  
network onto iPhones. So what gives? Is AT&T playing favorites?

That's exactly what Ben Scott, policy director for the advocacy group  
Free Press, thinks. The group issued a statement Thursday expressing  
its concern over what it sees as an inconsistent policy.

"We are troubled that carriers like AT&T are playing gatekeeper to the  
next generation of wireless Internet applications," Scott said in a  
statement. "No Internet service provider should be allowed to pick  
winners and losers online."

Free Press has long supported the notion of a free and open Internet.  
And the company has pushed the Federal Communications Commission to  
confirm that its Net Neutrality principles also apply to wireless  
networks. The FCC's Internet Policy Statement protects consumers'  
right to access any online content and services on any device of their  
choosing. These principles were used effectively last year to punish  
broadband provider Comcast for deliberately slowing some of its  
customers' BitTorrent traffic, a move that other broadband providers  
including AT&T has pointed to as evidence that no further regulation  
is needed to protect consumers' access to Internet applications.

AT&T has also publicly supported the notion that these Net Neutrality  
rules should also apply to wireless Internet access. In fact, Jim  
Cicconi, senior executive vice president of legislative affairs for  
AT&T, said as much during a panel discussion hosted by a Washington  
Post reporter in November.

"The same principles should apply across the board. As people migrate  
to the use of wireless devices to access the Internet,  
they...certainly expect that we treat these services the same way,"  
the Washington Post reporter quoted Cicconi as saying in her blog post.

Free Press's Scott, who appeared on the panel with Cicconi in  
November, pointed out AT&T's contradiction in his statement.

"AT&T has acknowledged that open Internet principles should apply to  
wireless and that consumers expect unfettered mobile access," Scott  
said. "So why is AT&T deciding what online video its iPhone customers  
can watch and what they can't?"

The argument put forth by Free Press is a compelling one. And right  
now, AT&T doesn't have an answer or an explanation as to why the MLB  
streaming video would be treated differently from the Sling video.  
Mark Siegel, an AT&T spokesman, said the company could not comment yet  
until it looked into the matter further.

But earlier this year, Siegel had plenty to say about Sling and  
streaming video in general. As a guest on the Clark Howard radio show,  
Siegel compared using Sling's service over a wireless connection to  
sending bulk e-mail and spam, activities that he said eat up too much  
of the network's bandwidth. "You can't use a service called  
'Slinging,' where you redirect a wireless TV signal to your phone. We  
do not allow that type of application on our phones," he said. "It's  
absolutely cool (technology), but if we allowed these kinds of  
services, the highway would quickly become clogged."

Indeed, streaming video eats up a lot of bandwidth. Because cellular  
networks are divided into cells, users in a particular cell share the  
available bandwidth in that cell or region. This means that streaming  
a lot of high-quality video over the network could potentially eat up  
all the available bandwidth and degrade service for other subscribers  
in that cell.

This is why MLB.com is using a standards-based streaming technology  
that will detect the speed of the network and adjust the quality of  
the video to the bandwidth that is available. The latest version of  
the SlingPlayer submitted to Apple for the App Store used similar  
technology that would cap the bit rate to ensure it was below Apple's  
and AT&T's threshold, according to David Eyler, a project manager for  
Sling Media, who commented for an earlier story on CNET News on this  
topic.

Eyler also said during that earlier interview that the explanation he  
had been given for not allowing the SlingPlayer to be used over the 3G  
network was that AT&T doesn't allow video services that redirect TV  
signals onto its network.

What's even more puzzling about why AT&T would allow MLB's At Bat  
application to be used over its 3G network and not the SlingPlayer, is  
the fact that the MLB application is likely to put a lot more strain  
on the network than the SlingPlayer App. Here's why. The MLB At Bat  
application is likely to have more subscribers streaming video than  
the SlingPlayer app. MLB.com At Bat 2009 ranks among the top 100  
overall paid applications in the App Store, according to the MLB's own  
Web site. And the application, which costs $9.99 to download, has only  
been available for about two months.The new, free streaming capability  
is likely to encourage even more downloads.

Meanwhile, the SlingPlayer app, which costs $29.99 to download, is  
likely to appeal to only a niche audience, since it also requires  
users to have a $150 SlingBox device in their homes to redirect the TV  
signals to their iPhones.

But more importantly, MLB At Bat subscribers will be tuning into the  
same video event at the same time. And since sports fans often root  
for teams in their own city, there is a good chance that many fans  
tuning into a particular game on their iPhones will be in the same  
geographic area, which is exactly the kind of scenario that could  
bring a cellular network to its knees. AT&T struggled to keep its 3G  
network up and running in Austin during the South By Southwest (SXSW)  
conference earlier this year when there was a high concentration of  
iPhone users.

By contrast, SlingPlayer users are not likely to be accessing the same  
video content at the same time in the same exact cell or region, which  
is actually less taxing on a wireless network.

But this isn't the first time that AT&T has shown preferential  
treatment to one application over another. OrbLive, which is offered  
on the App Store, also redirects TV signals onto the iPhone using a Wi- 
Fi network or the 3G cellular network. The application is designed to  
allow people to stream media from a PC to the iPhone wirelessly, much  
like how the SlingPlayer works.

For right now, iPhone users are simply left to wonder "why?" But stay  
tuned for more updates. I'm confident that AT&T will have an  
explanation shortly.