NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Internet Access and Capitalism
OK. It's not as if we don't have parallels from history to guide us. The anti-regulatory refrains were loud from the railroad barons, from Standard Oil, from AT&T pre-Ma Bell divestiture, and so on. The common thread is that these enterprises provided crucial access to *other* things that could not economically be reached in other ways at the time. The railroads provided the key transportation mechanism for goods and people. Standard Oil effectively monopolized a key energy source needed for all manner of services and production. AT&T controlled most U.S. telecom with all of its attendant impacts. In all of these cases, the controlling interests argued that regulation would hobble operational management, undermine investment incentives, and other bump in the night horrors. But these are scare tactics. Hell, John D. got even richer after the break-up of Standard, since he owned stock in the new companies that did so well. AT&T has reassembled itself like the "mercury metal" cop in "Terminator 2." Internet Access falls into this same grouping of critical infrastructure since it is necessary to reach *all* Internet-based services. Before long, how long is unclear but it will happen, virtually all telecom will be Internet based, integrated in such a manner that the Internet itself may virtually disappear for most people. It will be a pervasive utility like power and water (in the well-developed parts of the world at least). It is obvious that access to this resource cloud cannot be allowed to be anticompetitively managed by dominant ISP gatekeepers, who increasingly have economic reasons to favor (either directly or indirectly) their own rapidly expanding content offerings vis-a-vis those of competing outside Web-based services. The key to avoiding these problems is genuine competition. But in the U.S. at least creating conditions for that to occur, given the historical and political baggage, is very difficult. Even the new FCC broadband plan is mainly focused on expanding broadband access into areas effectively unserved now, not in creating a robust competitive landscape nationwide. The Commission's repeated repudiation of wholesale access arrangements -- that have been successful in creating competition in much of the world -- suggests that real competition is not high on the Commission's agenda. That's not to say that the Commission's efforts to expand broadband aren't a good thing -- they are. But there's an apparent unwillingness to go the whole distance that is difficult to ignore. And competition means *real* competition. The mere presence of a wireless (WISP) ISP in a given area, for example, doesn't create real competition when it provides a small fraction of the bandwidth available from the dominant carrier, at many multiples the cost that the dominant carrier charges. In an area where that WISP provides the only effective Internet access the situation is different. If you're starving, you're usually unconcerned about not having more than one menu choice. I believe that talk of "repurposing" already "abandoned" copper for competitive purposes is basically spurious. Nobody in their right mind would invest in new copper outside plant these days, and the cost of maintaining existing copper, already rotting on poles (or worse, in the ground) is very high and rising rapidly. Given that reality, there is little logic in most cases to spending capital installing [V][VH]DSL terminals on abandoned copper when you know the end game is going to be fiber anyway. AT&T knows this, even as they keep trying to leverage more and more out of their copper facilities in a desperate race to try keep up with cable. Eventually AT&T will go all fiber. They'll have to. For now they just want to stay in the game. This also points out why it is disingenuous for the ISP lobby to try draw comparisons with Google. While switching ISPs, even assuming an effective competitor exists, is usually a BFD, Bing is just a click away, and Google is dedicated to their Data Liberation efforts that make it even easier for Google users to leave, if they so choose. Once the like of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck allied themselves with Big Telecom and began spouting all manner of bizarre conspiratorial anti-neutrality garbage, it was even more evident how much panic has erupted within the halls of the dominant ISPs and their minions. Just as War is too important to be left to the Generals, the Internet is too important to be left to ISPs alone. --Lauren-- NNSquad Moderator