Please Let Me Receive My Video Unencumbered!
The Net Neutrality debate continued this week with a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that favors large network operators, and arguably could limit consumer’s access to the internet applications and services they crave. In the ruling, the Court decided the FCC does not have the authority to explicitly regulate the flow of internet traffic. Hence, the FCC’s landmark directive limiting Comcast’s ability to block BitTorrent traffic is unwarranted. The ruling could give network operators the precedent to selectively prioritize or block specific classes or types of internet traffic. Thereby, potentially having a profound effect on the further adoption of voice and video over IP services.
The communication space, particularly real-time video, continues to evolve and the options for consumers expand everyday:
- Earlier this year at CES, several television manufacturers, such as Panasonic, introduced products to enable video conferencing from the comfort of one’s living room.
- Mobile video is no longer a futuristic concept and networks and smartphone processors are reaching speeds capable of delivering and processing high-quality real-time video transmission.
- Today, GIPS expanded our product portfolio by introducing VideoEngine-Mobile for the Android platform.
- One can easily imagine a future generation iPad with a front-facing camera enabling high quality two-way video.
The promise of receiving voice and video from any device, at anytime, anywhere in the world, is becoming a reality.
As video becomes commonplace, the question at hand is—how will consumers receive the flood of packets laden with video frames and—will network operators have a say in determining which packet is most deserving of an unencumbered path through the internet. The debate surely will continue with more still to come from the Courts, FCC and Congress.








