Should the Internet be neutral?
Challenges for Democracy series, Article 7

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I have cable Internet, and I have good service. I'm not complaining. I have had reasonable service from the phone companies... except they don't like to supply information supporting bogus Internet bills. I support capitalism, and these service companies need to have business models that keep them in business. I'm generally all too glad to purchase their services.

Most of us like modern conveniences. We don't like getting up in the middle of the night to throw logs on a fire. We don't like pumping water by hand. We don't want to maintain an electric generator. We find the Internet much more convenient than going to 20 university libraries and 50 companies to do research. And we support making money from providing services.

The telecommunications and cable businesses are highly competitive, and despite the moans from those businesses they are also profitable. To stay that way they have to search for more competitive business models. But the business of these industries has nothing to do with ensuring that you and I have access to everything we want access to, or making sure that everyone can provide information, whether it be weather forecasts, movies, radio, old TV broadcasts, email, Web pages, and on and on. If these businesses accomplish these things, that's... incidental.

The newest business model being paraded before the government, wants to sell privileged bandwidth to the Internet providers like eBay and Google. Note that they already sell bandwidth ("pipes," T1 lines, etc.) to providers, and they already sell bandwidth to us, the receivers.

If they sell privileged bandwidth to high bandwidth users, such as Vongo, Live365, Vonage, and Google (to name a few), then movies and audio over the Internet will cost us more because the provider will have to charge us more. Funny, we pay one way or the other. It's like the government taxing us on income, and then again on our purchases - supposedly we don't notice as much when they take smaller amounts from different pockets.

I'm not totally against paying more for higher bandwidth - would be nice if it was free - but it isn't realistic because it does take more equipment to support that bandwidth. The infrastructure providers have a valid point. They can't build more superhighway without incurring costs. Bandwidth costs money to provide.

There is something much more important here at stake: access to information. If someone writes an article that I'm interested in reading in Rhodesia or Brazil or Germany or in my back yard, I can know about it and read it instantly. That's now at risk. History shows that when companies are free to do as they wish, they restrict access to shape it so that it is supportive of their financial gain, favoring access by some and preventing access by others. In recent years it has been happening in the news media as syndication has squeezed out local voices in newspapers, radio, and TV. In this world of very powerful special interest groups, restricting communications that isn't supportive of special interests (read corporate profits) is likely to be a common occurrence.

Companies are always looking for the sweet spot - some anticompetitive position they can get into and milk for all its worth. The history of companies that lock themselves into profitable corners is that they soon fail to innovate, lack entrepreneurship, become uncompetitive and the economy takes a nose dive. Companies in England did this before and after WWII - it severely damaged the economy. Steel mills in the US did this. Forced by competition, they finally innovated and are now competitive. The US automotive industry is the newest victim (one of its troubles). Anticompetitive positions and failure to innovate hurts these businesses and it hurts us.

Sears, once the highly praised "working man's friend" evolved over the decades to cater to higher dollar sales and wealthier people, finally making themselves uncompetitive and driving many of their stores out of business. (Sears eventually regrouped and found ways to become more competitive.) In my opinion, the nation's largest superstore is following the same track. It jumped track by easing away from their lowest price tradition and layaway, and now they too are courting the upscale buyer as they have become so large they can fend off competition. The path is just too seductive to pass up... and it will work... for a while.

A more relevant example is the phone companies. Bell Labs did basic research on modern miracles like solid state devices (transistors, which led to computer chips), and fiber optics which potentially can carry just about all of the channels in the world. While Bell Labs did this, parent Ma Bell fiddled with cheap materials and slow innovation. When it came time to roll out fiber optics, Ma Bell undersized the channel bandwidth and then largely failed to install fiber anywhere except where it thought business would demand it or in high priced subdivisions where developers would put it in - lucrative markets. Tearing apart Ma Bell made sense - it created more innovative and profitable companies.

As a result of Ma Bell's short-sightedness, the now expensive to install and maintain telephone copper wire system, which has low bandwidth due to low frequency capabilities, can't compete with cable, and even the undersized fiber optic system can't compete with cable. Behold: failure to innovate - people with narrow vision instead of broad vision. Special interests.

Now telecommunications companies want to do the same thing again by selling privileged bandwidth to providers. They are turning their back on the real money, which is in providing higher bandwidth to consumers so they can get what they want... that is, if they can roll out the technology to do it. Broadband service (DSL, Cable) in the US grew by 19% during the last 12 months. It's more profitable to sell more bandwidth to twelve customers for a dollar a piece so they can watch movies on demand, than to sell $5.00 worth of privileged bandwidth to Google and eBay. But you have to be innovative and far-sighted.

Sooner or later we may have to go to Plan B - sooner if the Congress passes legislation allowing infrastructure providers to sell privileged bandwidth to Internet providers.

Plan B. The current Internet, superior though it may be... and even the super-fantastic Internet 2, has a design snarl. It has some great qualities. It was originally designed by the military to be a fail-safe network. You could break it in one place, and it would still work. That's a good thing. It's ubiquitous (everywhere), and that's a good thing. It is real time (instantaneous communications on demand) - that's a good thing. It is very individualized - if you want to watch a video over the Internet, you don't have to wait until 8:00 for it to start. That is a good thing and a bad thing.

The Internet is based on point to point, individualized communication - not so good. If a movie was broadcast to everyone simultaneously, as are radio, TV, and cable, then there would be just one signal going out to everyone at once, and it would be narrow bandwidth. But if 2000 people start watching a movie over the Internet, it takes 2000 times the bandwidth. This points out where the current design falls apart. It can be a bandwidth super-hog, especially for high bandwidth media like video.

Instead of sending from Chicago to 2000 people around the planet, it would be better for there to be clones of that one site that are much closer to the consumer. If there are 200 clones, then the superhighway would only have to carry traffic to the clones - that's one tenth the bandwidth, or even much less. Eventually it is likely to be less expensive for the provider to purchase the local pipes and clones he needs, than to buy superhighways. Decentralizing providers makes sense, especially for high bandwidth video - video providers need to be... ubiquitous.

The other part of Plan B is for individuals to collectively install their own fiber optic infrastructure, and build an Internet to support their needs and support free communications. Fiber would begin by connecting houses on streets, which join with the subdivision which joins with multiple subdivisions, which join with the city, and then two cities can afford to run fiber optic cables between them. Voila, an Internet. With technology architecture support possibly from companies like Google, Cisco, Microsoft, and eBay, there would soon be an Internet free of rampant commercial and political control... and free of telecommunication and cable companies.

But of course, there still could be Plan A. A viable Plan A is where the telecommunication and cable companies decide to provide service on a neutral basis, and stop trying to poison themselves with the economic death sentence of commercial and political control.

- Scott

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