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Friday, December 15, 2006
Nothing neutral about it 
| | At a superficial level, it seems to be the now customary hand-wring about how the U.S. is falling behind in broadband deployment: |
| | The United States now ranks 12th in the world in the total percentage of citizens that subscribe to broadband access, lagging behind such countries as Iceland, Korea, Sweden, Belgium and Canada. The trend line is even worse. The United States ranks 17th for the growth of these high-speed connections, outpaced by nearly all of our economic peers. Our broadband speeds don't measure up either. Korea's citizens, for example, have access to 50 megabits per second connections, making Internet services at typical U.S. speeds "broadband lite," at best. |
| | Then he goes on to talk about exactly two applications better broadband will help: |
| | Though once considered a luxury, broadband access is quickly becoming basic infrastructure for any country wishing to benefit from the development of modern digital communications and Internet technologies. In particular, video, in all its forms and many that have yet to be imagined, will emerge as a common language of Internet communications. Advances in video are now making it possible for people to view and share video across the Internet to virtually any type of device from TVs and cell phones to PCs and portable video players. The wild popularity of video sharing Web sites clearly foreshadow where 21st century communications are headed. |
| | Video and telephony. Not the other ten zillion uses to which Net connections can be put. Why just those two? He continues, |
| | The massive productivity gains made possible by the first wave of Internet advances in this country will not be replicated with a second wave without universal, high-speed broadband access. This will benefit both the consumer and industry alike. The first wave of Internet technology was developed by U.S. companies because of our large domestic market demand. In the global marketplace, if we don't drive the buildout of Internet 2.0 here in the United States, the vendors who benefit from international buildouts, will likely not be here, reducing U.S. competitiveness. |
| | The time for a national broadband plan is now. We need to set national goals and hold our service providers, regulators and legislators accountable for meeting these goals. A few things that I think will help immediately; 1) The government hurts innovation when yesterday's rules are used for today's technology, including Internet phone service; 2) With regular phone service penetration nearly universal, develop federal policies to make broadband as accessible as telephones; 3) Press firmly ahead with the 2009 digital television transition, while continuing to clear a path for the coming explosion in wireless broadband services and technologies. |
| | That sounds kinda good. But which of yesterday's rules are we talking about here? The Common Carriage regulations that had been with us since the Telecommuncations Act of 1934 created them (along with the FCC), but which were tossed by the Supreme Court in the Brand X decision in the summer of '05? The arcane and nearly incomprehensible distinctions between "telecommunications services" and "information services"? What kind of federal policies would make broadband as accessible as telephones? What difference does the digital television transition make, since it's largely about making TV stations all move to the UHF band and transmit only digital signals — which has little to do what happens on the Net? Why even bring it up? |
| | The agenda becomes clear in Giancarlo's penultimate paragraph: |
| | America has made good use of communications technology, and the country's businesses and people have benefited enormously. But in the new highly competitive global economy, no country can take its leadership for granted. Continued governmental support to promote an open and highly competitive telecommunications market combined with accelerated corporate and private initiatives to ensure that all Americans have equal, high-speed broadband access are crucial to the country's economic and social well-being. We also cannot tie the hands of the Internet through additional regulation, such as "net neutrality,'' which eliminates the ability of the Internet to support new applications. We should be breaking down barriers rather than building them. |
| | Thus the piece turns into an anti-Net Neutrality press release by the telco/cableco duopoly. |
| | The Net's hands are indeed tied, but by a regulatory system that reduces deployment competition to exactly two competitors in each locality: a telco and a cableco. Both treat the Net as gravy on top of other services — not as fundamental infrastructure. Existing regulation is mostly about maintaining this duopoly. |
| | Net Neutrality is a red herring here. Lots of arguments can be made against it. Lack of clear definitions and possibility of unintended consequences are the main two. But to argue that Net neutrality "eliminates the ability of the Internet to support new applications" is so far beyond wrong that it calls Giancarlo's motives into question. Has he joined the carriers' lobbying teams? Sounds like it. |
| | What's right about Net neutrality is its respect for the Net's inherent ability to support all applications. Not just video and telephony. |
| | It's a bummer to see an executive of Charles Giancarlo's stature argue that an unfettered cable/telco duopoly is our best bet for becoming a global broadband leader. That's not what the duopoly cares about, and it never has been. Right now cablecos and telcos are motivated mostly by getting into each other's business while protecting their own. |
| | Note how Giancarlo ignores efforts by citizens and businesses working with local and regional governments to get broadband that the carriers won't deliver. By ignoring those citizens, those businesses, those hospitals and schools — and worse, by failing to credit their good efforts — he is siding against them as well. |
| | Broadband is a vital infrastructure, and without nurturing it, encouraging it and building it, America risks becoming an Internet Age also-ran. |
| | We know what vital infrastructures are. Water. Roads. Electricity. Waste treatment. Would we be better off if we jobbed those out to Verizon and Comcast? |
| | Think of what real infrastructure supports. The answer is pretty much everything. That's what makes them infrastructure. Is that what telephone and cable companies do? They could build the Net to support everything, but they never have in the past. They've deployed asymmetrical and crippled services that take a back seat to older businesses they value far more. |
| | Does it make sense to put just those two businesses in charge of building infrastructure for everybody? Well, that's the plan being argued for here. And it will fail. |
| | If Mr. Giancarlo wants to fight regulation, he should watch how his cableco and telco buddies lobby for laws to prohibit competition by citizens whose only practical choice is to work with local and regional governments toward getting better broadband that those carriers fail to deliver. It's not pretty. |
| | I'm no fan of government regulation, or of government competing with business. But what we have had for generations is federal government protection of communications monopolies; and we need to work around those monopolies for as long as the feds help maintain them. |
| | Local government doesn't need to compete as a business, either. What they need to do is help businesses other than just their local duopoly. Nice, fat, supportive net connectivity will do that. No matter who it comes from. |
| | If Saving the Net is about "consumer access" to "content", we lose. If it's about preserving and growing a place nobody owns, everybody can use, and anybody can improve ‹ literally the best marketplace that the world has ever known.... one that, if they understood it, would warm the hearts of every pro-market, pro-business Republican — we stand a chance.... |
| | We need to sell the Net as a public marketplace, and not a private one: a marketplace that supports everybody and everything — including all the small and medium-sized businesses that can't happen as long as the carriers can't imagine they're doing anything more than freight forwarding that needs to get more specialized and billable. |
| | It is essential that we stop regarding the Net as a grace of cableco and telco carriage. In the long run, it's the other way around. The incumbent carriers need to know that too, and to start thinking about advantages of incumbency that aren't about leveraging legacy business models and customer lock-in strategies for the duration. There are huge benefits to incumbency in the vastly larger markets opened by widespread Net infrastructure. While we think about better ways to build out that infrastructure, we also need to think about ways of helping the incumbent carriers see the light at the end of the tunnel. Or, to borrow from Senator Stevens, the lights at the ends of the tubes. |
| | As I've said too often already, we need AND logic here, not OR. |
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