NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: Vint Cerf: "Increase Bandwidth"
On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 1:06 PM, Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com> wrote:
>
> Vint Cerf: "Increase Bandwidth"
>
> http://j.mp/mgqJ5y (Computerworld)
>
> "While Internet carriers may fret about Netflix, Hulu and other
> streaming media services saturating their bandwidth, Internet
> forefather Vint Cerf has a simple answer for this potential problem:
> Increase bandwidth exponentially."
>
> - - -
>
> And I'll add, with sufficient bandwidth at a reasonable price,
> assuming no purposeful anticompetitive or anti-consumer actions on the
> part of ISPs, many of the core issues associated with Net Neutrality
> concerns could become largely or completely moot.
The article goes on to point at how Google proposed a framework that
showed how those anti-competitive practices could have been addressed
definitively:
"Last year, Google and Verizon introduced a proposal for
establishing rules in the United States for maintaining an open
Internet. The pitch for open access, however, was widely criticized
for excluding mobile access."
"Cerf explained that the reason the two companies did not define
rules for mobile access was that they could not agree on what
rules should be in place for wireless."
Right. And if more folks understood what that deal really meant, it
could have been a definitive step forward, because Google got the
incumbent, Verizon, to acknowledge the distinction between Internet
connectivity and "specialized services." Thereupon the FCC *also*
forthrightly addressed that same distinction in their "Further Inquiry
into Two Under-Developed Questions" Request for Input:
http://internetdistinction.com/statement/fcc-two-underdeveloped-issues-da-10-1667a1/
Unfortunately, many advocates simply reacted to the mere countenancing
of "specialized services" at all, or to the exclusion of wireless.
But the whole reason why debates over "NN" were continually confused,
was the failure of both the incumbents and policymakers to
appropriately distinguish the Internet from other things network
providers were trying to offer. A major reason the confusion was
perpetuated was because the prospect of "next generation networks" was
regularly injected into the mix without first recognizing the key,
general purpose, nature of the Internet platform we already had, so
that we could see what was different from it, and what was at stake in
considering other propositions.
Once the distinction was acknowledged by an incumbent and the FCC, the
issue of specialized services affecting or being confused with real
Internet connectivity was actually no longer critical. And the entire
NN "debate" would no longer be constantly derailed.
For example, the nature of congestion management or "reasonable
network management" could be described clearly. See:
http://internetdistinction.com/statement/#Overriding%20Open%20Internet
http://internetdistinction.com/statement/#Inhibiting%20Internet
This is what the GOOG-VZN proposition did, that many did not
understand adequately. Drawing the distinction correctly would have
made it possible to establish a clear, understandable and solid policy
for landlines that would have been a very useful model for addressing
the wireless domain. Most importantly, we would have ended up with a
context for policy that would have been a definitive step forward,
rather than the -- charitably speaking -- murky policy approach the
FCC ended up taking.
I guess we'll follow the Dutch now. And, of course, we have Vint
still making the case for us
Seth