The Internet is largely meritocratic in its design. If people like instapundit.com better than cnn.com, that’s where they’ll go. If they like the search engine A9 better than Google, they vote with their clicks. Is it a problem, then, if the gatekeepers of the Internet (in most places, a duopoly of the local phone and cable companies) discriminate between favored and disfavored uses of the Internet? To take a strong example, would it be a problem if AT&T makes it slower and harder to reach Gmail and quicker and easier to reach Yahoo! mail?
Welcome to the fight over “network neutrality,” Washington’s current obsession. The debate centers on whether it is more “neutral” to let consumers reach all Internet content equally or to let providers discriminate if they think they’ll make more money that way.
Category: Broadband
TBL on Net Neutrality
This is an international issue. In some countries it is addressed better than others. (In France, for example, I understand that the layers are separated, and my colleague in Paris attributes getting 24Mb/s net, a phone with free international dialing and digital TV for 30euros/month to the resulting competition.) In the US, there have been threats to the concept, and a wide discussion about what to do. That is why, though I have written and spoken on this many times, I blog about it now.
Twenty-seven years ago, the inventors of the Internet[1] designed an architecture[2] which was simple and general. Any computer could send a packet to any other computer. The network did not look inside packets. It is the cleanness of that design, and the strict independence of the layers, which allowed the Internet to grow and be useful. It allowed the hardware and transmission technology supporting the Internet to evolve through a thousandfold increase in speed, yet still run the same applications. It allowed new Internet applications to be introduced and to evolve independently.
A Word for Governor Doyle on the Broadband Expansion Tax Credit
Gov. Jim Doyle plans to sign the broadband bill passed by both the state Senate and Assembly on Tuesday, a top aide said Wednesday afternoon.
“The governor supports it,” said spokesman Matthew Canter. “In fact, he helped lead the way for it. It’s part of his Grow Wisconsin plan.”
The legislation will give telecommunications companies tax exemptions if they provide high-speed Internet service to parts of Wisconsin that lack it or are underserved – mostly in the rural and northern areas of the state.
I hope that Governor Doyle will insert some language into this bill that requires the recipients of this subsidy – local Telco’s – to provide symmetrical internet access, not the odd services they largely provide today where the downstream and upstream services run at different speeds. The internet is not TV. Our generally poor broadband service significantly limits the opportunities for emerging home based internet businesses and services. This is a trivial change and should be a no brainer for the Governor. Learn much more on these issues, including why the US is so far behind countries like Japan and Korea in true broadband (100mbps symmetrical speeds), here.
Om Malik tells us why this is important.
1500 Square Mile Silicon Valley Wireless RFP
The Joint Venture Silicon Valley public/private partnership has issued its RFP: The group of cities, counties, governmental bodies, and corporations want a wireless network of some kind–technology isn’t decided and could be a broad mix–that would cover Silicon Valley. Winning vendor(s) will be selected from the respondents to their RFP by September, and recommended to the 16 cities, San Mateo County, and 16 other jurisdictions that have signed on. I wrote in January about the scope and nature of this 1,500-square-mile potential project….
Marina Del Rey Gets 45Mbit Internet Service
Poking along with 2mbps service in Madison (and far less than that upstream), Multiband announced that they will begin providing 45mbit/second service to Marina Del Rey fro $24.95 to 34.95/month.
Zyprexa for the Phone Companies
Ben McConnell states the obvious with respect to the yellow pages and monopoly telcos:
insanity:
unsoundness of mind or lack of understanding as prevents one from having the mental capacity required by law to enter into a particular relationship, status, or transaction or as removes one from criminal or civil responsibility
Which leads me to the phone companies.
Here’s an update to last week’s post about AT&T’s practice of leaving unwanted 8-pound phone directories scattered in doorways around the nation…
SMF Switches to Free WiFi
The airport has an interesting history with Wi-Fi that I’ve been writing occasionally about since 2003: It’s a fairly small airport, not atypical for state and province capitals that tend to be located in politically expedient places that aren’t often also bustling metropolises compared to the big towns that developed in their political unit. (Olympia? Albany? Austin?)
Sacramento originally contracted with Airport Network Solutions, which said back in 2003 that it would cost $110,000 to add service. I noted in Aug. 2003 that without aggregation and resale they’d never recoup even the modest cost based on their assumptions of users and what they were charging for a day pass ($6.95). The airport apparently bore the cost of installation repaid out of fees rather than requiring its contractor to eat Capx, which is quite odd.
This is Madison’s fate as well. The economics will make it free over time – assuming we have wifi at the airport – some day.
AT&T Seeks to Hide Spy Docs
AT&T is seeking the return of technical documents presented in a lawsuit that allegedly detail how the telecom giant helped the government set up a massive internet wiretap operation in its San Francisco facilities.
In papers filed late Monday, AT&T argued that confidential technical documents provided by an ex-AT&T technician to the Electronic Frontier Foundation shouldn’t be used as evidence in the case and should be returned.
The documents, which the EFF filed under a temporary seal last Wednesday, purportedly detail how AT&T diverts internet traffic to the National Security Agency via a secret room in San Francisco and allege that such rooms exist in other AT&T switching centers.
Whitepaper on Telco Promises
Here’s a very well-written report of the Bell’s trail of Rate Relief and Broken Promises. It is funded by Broadband Everywhere, a consortium that’s openly funded by small cablecos and the NCTA, who are fighting back against the Bell-flavored franchise reform law moving through Congress. It relies heavily on the work of Bruce Kushnick, but it also cites many relevant local press stories from, e.g., Enid OK (where a promise of 500 jobs led to rate relief and a net loss of jobs), Austin TX (where a new Texas law that assumed “competition” would lead to lower prices and granted rate relief actually led to rate caps), etc., etc., etc.
Really good stuff on a bad story that demands more attention! Mainstream reporters, attention please!
Powell Warns Net Neutrologists Not to Be Naive
Former FCC chairman Michael Powell is up on the stage at the Freedom to Connect conference right now, and he warns the tech elite crowd here not to
be naive about the dangers of asking Congress for legislation on Net
Neutrality. As he explains:The legislative process does not work well when it has a weak understanding
of innovation and tech policy. You are talking about 535 members who need
to to get this. They have a very shallow understanding [of Net Neutrality].
If you go give them a quiz about the seven layers of the Internet, good
luck.
David Lazurus has more on the proposed legislation.