TelephonyOnline has an article Verizon’s got game about Verizon’s launch of an online gaming service.
What’s important about this is that it represents the move by an iLec into content bundling and subscription of multi-player gaming services that have been typically provided by “edge” gaming companies.
A Yankee group analyst, Michal Goodman, adds
Verizon Game Network offers definite advantages for the serious game players [...] for this group, speed and latency are always issues, and if you are a Verizon subscriber and you game against other Verizon subscribers, you are going to get optimized performance
He also says the service
guarantees broadband subscribers faster speeds and lower latency because the VGN games are hosted on specialized CNET servers
This certainly seems to be moving into a grey area, with Verizon promoting (at least) and guarenteeing (at best) a better class of service for subscribers to their gaming service as opposed to OSI layer 7 competitors. I went and read through the information on the Verizon site, and couldn’t find any such claims, but Michael Goodman seems to have gotten his information from somewhere.
This is *exactly* what we are worried about when the access providers start climbing the food chain — discrimination against competing services. Which maybe wouldn’t be so bad, except that those access providers got their network in the first place as a legally protected monopoly …
This is bad news, and bears watching to see if it develops further.