The Unpredictable Certainty White Papers (1997) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Interoperability, Standards, and Security: Will the NII Be Based on Market Principles?
Interoperability, Standards, and Security: Will the NII Be Based on Market Principles?
Pages 479-491
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 479... ...
Carriage of video, voice, and data constitutes the foundation of the advanced broadband networks now being developed for bow telephone and cable television networks. Behind this simple concept, however, is a roiling pot of players and special interests, each Wing to invade the operas turf or at least protect its or m.
|
From page 480... ...
The television industry has relied on interlace scanning and sees it as important to keeping down the cost of its investment all; He computer industry wants progressive scanning formats. Likewise, those in the computer business look at other players and find them to be quite different from themselves.
|
From page 481... ...
All you have to do is standardize all elements of advanced broadband networks and the equipment that Will use those networks. This can resolve all issues of compatibility, portability, and ~nteroperability.
|
From page 482... ...
But industries that are fast-moving, where standards are constantly evolving, and where the standards themselves are within the proprietary control of an individual company, are hostile environments for commodity implementers. And the computer industry in the l990s, under the technological impetus and creative impulse of the American start-ups, }us been transmuting into just such an industry, shining the ground out from under both the slow-moving Western giants and the commodity manufacturing-oriented Japanese giants.
|
From page 483... ...
The computer industry traditionally takes a different view of both standards and regulation than do He broadcast or telephone industries. Appropriately, it devotes significant energy and resources to remair ing free of regulatory schemes and government-imposed requirements.
|
From page 484... ...
These different groups represent different perspectives, depending upon whether their members come exclusively or In part from the broadcast industry, the cable television industry, the consumer electronics industry, the telephone industry, the programming and production community, or the computer industry. This level of activity is one indicator of the reality of convergence, they are all converging on the "set-top box." Another problem arises because private standards-setting efforts are as susceptible as is the government to attempts to use the process for some narrow end or to benefit some special interest.
|
From page 485... ...
Security for and protection of intellectual property are fundamental needs for the success of advanced broadband networks, but no less important is the ability ofthose networks to protect personal privacy~at is, He privacy of personal information. If advanced networks are to become "platforms for electronic commerce," they will need to support a wide variety of applications, including delivery of electronic products, home shopping, home banking, and medical assistance.
|
From page 486... ...
One such is the attempt to apply to video distribution and developing broadband networks the mode} currently used for voice telephone service, whereby an interface specification was developed and used to separate network functions Dom the functions performed by "consumer premises equipment" [461. The telephone model is viewed as a way to create competitive markets for equipment used to supply broadband services [471.
|
From page 487... ...
[10] Former FCC Commissioner Ervin Duggan, now president of PBS, captured the cultural diversity of at least two players in He converging arena when, on a panel at a Cable Television Show, he said that, despite their size and cash, telephone companies posed no danger to the current Hollywood and programming communities because telephone executives "still sleep in their pajamas." Bell executives may yet prove him wrong as they make major investments in creative material.
|
From page 488... ...
Milton Mueller has taken a historian's look at the development of the telephone companies in the United States and examined the effect that interconnection requirements had on the rollout of telephone service in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Mueller maintains Hat the absence of interconnection requirements was an important element of the rapid penetration of telephone service in the United States.
|
From page 489... ...
CEG is resisting these requests, arguing, inter alla, potential interference with the features its members provide in consumer electronic equipment. Both sides have made extensive filings with the Commission in an ever growing record (In the Matter of Implementation of Section 17 of the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992; Compatibility Between Cable Systems and Consumer Electronics Equipment, FCC ET Docket No.
|
From page 490... ...
Neither expresses concern about foreign ownership in the context of national and international standards setting; European governments and European multinationals, in particular, have demonstrated an all too frequent tendency to use standards to protect domestic industries.
|
From page 491... ...
Retail sale proposals are advocated as consumer friendly and, as such, are supported by the organized public interest consumer groups. Retailers do not propose to cut off the right of network providers to also provide equipment, by sale or lease, but would prevent it from being bundled.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.