________ goes on we are likely to find that this home network connects tele-
________ vision sets, household appliances, and many other things. Some ac-
________ cess providers have suggested that they aren't technically prepared to
________ attach home networks, but the technology for doing it was developed
________ in the 1970's. In refusing to attach home networks, providers are ac-
________ tually protecting their ability to assign the network address of the cus-
________ tomer. By refusing to carry traffic to Internet addresses they didn't
________ assign, the access provider can prevent the customer from con-
________ tracting for simultaneous service with any other Internet access
________ provider.[10-20]

The most telling of these limits is video. Cable companies make a lot of
money streaming video to television sets. The Internet, in the view of some,
could become a competitor to cable, by streaming video to computers.
Under @Home rules, users were not permitted to stream more than ten
minutes of video to their computers.[10-21] And though AT&T offers congestion
as a reason for this limitation, at times it is a bit more forthcoming. As AT&T
executive Daniel Somers is reported to have said, when asked whether
AT&T would permit the streaming of video to computers, "[W]e didn't
spend $56 billion on a cable network to have the blood sucked out of our
veins."[10-22]

Cable's intent to exercise control is clear; it has already exercised control.
And if the business model that Cisco sells is as attractive as Cisco sells
it to be, then we should expect that cable will continue to exercise control
in the future. It will architect and enforce a network where the kinds of uses
and content that run on the network are as the network chooses -- which is
to say, it will build a network just the opposite of the network the Internet
originally was.

The evidence of this intent to discriminate was strongest at AT&T's
@Home media. As Francois Bar reports, "[T]he @Home 1998 annual re-
port is very clear" on the strategy of discrimination.[10-23] It proposed to steer its
customers, unknowingly, toward merchants that partnered with @Home. It
would do this through code and marketing -- through placement of ads, as
well as through "how do I" wizards that would direct customers to selected
sites. Their reports "explain how they will provide superior quality perfor-
mance to partnering merchants."[10-24] In this respect, Bar argues, "@Home is
acting very much like Microsoft, using its control of the operating system's
architecture to favor some applications over others."[10-25] This closed-access
control would allow cable owners to pursue only the exploration and devel-

[[158]]

p157 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p158w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p159

v?