AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T - message board), Verizon Communications
Inc. (NYSE: VZ - message board), and Qwest Communications
International Inc. (NYSE: Q - message board) don’t have hard, fast
policies in place to deal with consumer peer-to-peer traffic.
Despite the hype about P2P traffic volumes on carrier networks,
these phone companies say they're fine to watch and wait for
now.
One network operator CTO is even skeptical that P2P really causes
as much congestion in networks as has been hyped. (See P2P Fuels
Global Bandwidth Binge.)
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In separate conversations with leading technology executives from
three of the four largest carriers in the U.S., Light Reading has
learned that even while the industry is abuzz over P2P traffic, the
big boys don't see it as stopping up their networks… yet. They
are, however, quick to draw a distinction between their proposed TV
services and the other stuff that traverses the open
Internet.
"I think the view that we're looking at is: You have managed
services and you have unmanaged services," says Chris Rice,
AT&T's executive VP of network planning and engineering.
"Peer-to-peer services are unmanaged."
AT&T's consumer IPTV service, Rice says, is an example of a
managed service, because its content, though IP-based, travels a
private IP network down managed links to consumer homes.
"Obviously, unmanaged IP services deal with impairments. Sometimes
they have slower response times," Rice says. "Sometimes they have
quicker response times. It just depends on the usage and the volume
of traffic on the network at any given time. In a managed
environment, throughput is the same all the time."
"What we are doing with it at this point is dealing with it on a
congestion management basis," says Verizon's CTO, Mark Wegleitner.
"At this point we're a little bit reactive rather than proactive,
because we don't want to get out there and do something that's
going to stifle a viable service offering. But it's something that
I think the industry as a whole is going to have to step up
to."
Qwest CTO Pieter Poll says it may not even be causing as much
traffic as many think. "I'm not convinced that it causes network
congestion at this point, but clearly it has the potential to do
that," he says.
Poll says he's looked at Qwest's peering points for some idea of
how much P2P traffic is on its networks. And, while he admits that
it's not an exact measurement of the P2P traffic load, he says the
fears of network congestion are a little overblown.
"I… found that the traffic is well under what some in that industry
say is happening. I mean, you hear claims of significant
double-digit penetration of peer-to-peer traffic, and it was not
near there," Poll says.
By contrast, Internet companies are hyping P2P traffic services,
problems, and solutions at every turn. AOL LLC is using a P2P video
delivery system. BitTorrent Inc. is entering the legit movie
business. ntl group ltd. (Nasdaq: NTLI - message board) is using
BitTorrent's technology to reach its users with content. And
Sandvine Inc. , whose technology could be used to block P2P
traffic, had a noteworthy debut as a publicly traded firm. (See
Sandvine Leaps on London Listing, BitTorrent to Open Video Store,
NTL Teams on P2P Trial, and Carrier VOIP Leads Study.)
That's not to say that the RBOCs won't someday offer P2P services
themselves. It's just that, for now, they're not terribly worried
about unmanaged P2P traffic, especially that from video downloads
and the like.
"I don't want to be too negative on peer-to-peer, because I think
there's a place for peer-to-peer communications going forward,"
says Verizon's Wegleitner. "I think what we have to do though is
make sure it doesn't ruin the experience of everyone else."
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