Thursday, October 12, 2006
Network Neutrality -- A "third way"?
Robert D. Atkinson and Phil Weiser put forth an essay last summer entitled, A Third Way on Network Neutrality that's worth reading for its analysis of the current rhetoric on both sides of the NN debate even though it is critically flawed by absence of vision on the one hand and absence of realpolitik on the other. This is an important paper, though, and it is being read by people trying to understand the NN debate on its merits (thanks Steve Guich!). Below I try to put it in context.
The essay misses the critical dichotomy, where Bellheads ask
The absence of longer term vision is evidenced by the paper's approach to the revolutionary changes promised by the Internet as if they were minor and incremental improvements. They do not see the Internet as a force that could sweep away yesterday's telecommunications companies. They address the current debate, not the underlying tectonic shift and the longer-term strategies of the players, so they advocate compromise and moderation, not creative destruction.
On the realpolitik front, Atkinson and Weiser put forth a "Moderate Proposal" that, like Democracy, or Christianity, or The Golden Rule, would be great if only somebody would try it. The proposal has three points -- Consumer Protection, Competition Policy and Government Financial Incentives (accelerated depreciation rules and tax incentives). The proposal fails to match the zeitgeist on the first two. On Consumer Protection, the FCC has moved away from Chairman Michael Powell's "Fourth Freedom" -- a plain language statement by Internet access providers of service parameters -- replacing it with an "entitlement to Competition." On the Competition front, again the movement is in the opposite direction, witness the at&t-BellSouth merger on the table, and the almost complete collapse in the U.S. of competitive local telephony and independent Internet access. The zeitgeist matches the third point but this is not necessarily a good thing -- these days liberalized accounting rules and corporate tax benefits are a lot of quid with very little pro quo. Atkinson and Weiser propose that companies qualify for the proposed financial benefits if they meet the FCC definition of "broadband," and they further propose that the financial benefits are, "contingent upon broadband providers providing the level of open, best-efforts Internet service as defined by the FCC." As if the FCC definition of broadband is capable of evolving! The authors themselves point out that the FCC definition of broadband is stuck at 200 kilobits per second while over half of U.S. high speed Internet connections download at 2.5 megabits per second. In summary, the three legs of the essay's "Modest Proposal" are broken, broken and lame.
The essay has other weaknesses, too. It completely ignores the Internet2 research finding [.pdf] that, rather than provide complicated discrimination mechanisms for Internet traffic management, it is "far more cost effective to simply provide more bandwidth. With enough bandwidth in the network, there is no congestion and video bits do not need preferential treatment, which resulted in an Internet2 that "does not give preferential treatment [while it does] streaming HDTV, hold[s] thousands of high quality two-way video conferences simultaneously, and transfer[s] huge files of scientific data around the globe without loss of packets."
This ignorance leads the current essay's authors to an erroneous starting point, to wit, "For starters, consider the fact that investment in broadband networks is an extraordinarily expensive undertaking." The Internet2 research showed that networking equipment that doesn't break the IP packet stream into TV, telephony and data services is ten times cheaper than equipment that does. Furthermore, today's "triple play" fiber service, Verizon's FIOS for example, costs less than $3000 per home in service. This investment, which could last a decade or more, is a smaller one-time expense than, for example, a very inexpensive bottom-of-the-line used car that would be unlikely to last a decade. Furthermore, wireless broadband architectures exist today where capital expenditure grows smoothly with number of users. In other words, broadband networks are not "extraordinarily expensive." And they're growing cheaper and cheaper as new technology evolves.
Finally, the essay leaves us with the idea that it is "moderate" that our Internet access provider, rather than us, ourselves, choose what we access and the speed and performance at which we do so. This is a radical proposal, not moderate at all. Intelligence at the edge made the Internet the unprecedented success it is today. If the access provider chooses what we have access to, and the quality of that access, then they will be answering the question, "How do we change the Internet so we, the telcos, survive." If we allow that, the Internet starts down the slippery slope of corporate control that has already all but killed radio, television, the town square and other former venues of expression that used to belong to the public.
The essay misses the critical dichotomy, where Bellheads ask
How can we change the Internet so today's telecom industry survives?while Netheads ponder
How can we change the telecommunications industry so the Internet survives?
The absence of longer term vision is evidenced by the paper's approach to the revolutionary changes promised by the Internet as if they were minor and incremental improvements. They do not see the Internet as a force that could sweep away yesterday's telecommunications companies. They address the current debate, not the underlying tectonic shift and the longer-term strategies of the players, so they advocate compromise and moderation, not creative destruction.
On the realpolitik front, Atkinson and Weiser put forth a "Moderate Proposal" that, like Democracy, or Christianity, or The Golden Rule, would be great if only somebody would try it. The proposal has three points -- Consumer Protection, Competition Policy and Government Financial Incentives (accelerated depreciation rules and tax incentives). The proposal fails to match the zeitgeist on the first two. On Consumer Protection, the FCC has moved away from Chairman Michael Powell's "Fourth Freedom" -- a plain language statement by Internet access providers of service parameters -- replacing it with an "entitlement to Competition." On the Competition front, again the movement is in the opposite direction, witness the at&t-BellSouth merger on the table, and the almost complete collapse in the U.S. of competitive local telephony and independent Internet access. The zeitgeist matches the third point but this is not necessarily a good thing -- these days liberalized accounting rules and corporate tax benefits are a lot of quid with very little pro quo. Atkinson and Weiser propose that companies qualify for the proposed financial benefits if they meet the FCC definition of "broadband," and they further propose that the financial benefits are, "contingent upon broadband providers providing the level of open, best-efforts Internet service as defined by the FCC." As if the FCC definition of broadband is capable of evolving! The authors themselves point out that the FCC definition of broadband is stuck at 200 kilobits per second while over half of U.S. high speed Internet connections download at 2.5 megabits per second. In summary, the three legs of the essay's "Modest Proposal" are broken, broken and lame.
The essay has other weaknesses, too. It completely ignores the Internet2 research finding [.pdf] that, rather than provide complicated discrimination mechanisms for Internet traffic management, it is "far more cost effective to simply provide more bandwidth. With enough bandwidth in the network, there is no congestion and video bits do not need preferential treatment, which resulted in an Internet2 that "does not give preferential treatment [while it does] streaming HDTV, hold[s] thousands of high quality two-way video conferences simultaneously, and transfer[s] huge files of scientific data around the globe without loss of packets."
This ignorance leads the current essay's authors to an erroneous starting point, to wit, "For starters, consider the fact that investment in broadband networks is an extraordinarily expensive undertaking." The Internet2 research showed that networking equipment that doesn't break the IP packet stream into TV, telephony and data services is ten times cheaper than equipment that does. Furthermore, today's "triple play" fiber service, Verizon's FIOS for example, costs less than $3000 per home in service. This investment, which could last a decade or more, is a smaller one-time expense than, for example, a very inexpensive bottom-of-the-line used car that would be unlikely to last a decade. Furthermore, wireless broadband architectures exist today where capital expenditure grows smoothly with number of users. In other words, broadband networks are not "extraordinarily expensive." And they're growing cheaper and cheaper as new technology evolves.
Finally, the essay leaves us with the idea that it is "moderate" that our Internet access provider, rather than us, ourselves, choose what we access and the speed and performance at which we do so. This is a radical proposal, not moderate at all. Intelligence at the edge made the Internet the unprecedented success it is today. If the access provider chooses what we have access to, and the quality of that access, then they will be answering the question, "How do we change the Internet so we, the telcos, survive." If we allow that, the Internet starts down the slippery slope of corporate control that has already all but killed radio, television, the town square and other former venues of expression that used to belong to the public.
Technorati Tags: Internet, NetworkNeutrality, PhilWeiser, RobertDAtkinson
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