Who really owns the Internet? Is it the telecom industry or the people? Is it something real and tangible, or could another one be made now that it’s been done? It’s something I’m sure we all have an opinion on (or would with a moment of thought) but does the cold, hard, capitalist reality stand up to it?
I was reading an article linked on TotalFark earlier today where yet another senator is trying to make a name for himself in the eyes of the consumer by unnecessarily stepping on the businesses that keep the Internet going. His claim is that legislation is needed to make it illegal for a telecom to accept payment on a promise to deliver a site to a home user faster than another because the idea has been bandied about by several telecom giants who, inevitably, say that they can do what they want because they own the network.
It could be said that this kind of legislation is a boost to the openness and equality that is the Internet, and it could be said that it’s an unneeded intrusion into the way private companies deliver their data. What’s really at stake, however, is ownership of the lines. If the private companies own the lines, then they own the right to sell them however they want. If the government owns the lines, then they have the right to legislate them all they want.
I’m a consumer, yes, but I’ve also worked a hard day before both at a telecom company and at an independent ISP. I’ve run phone lines, repaired wall jacks, installed telco equipment, installed and configured modem racks and RADIUS servers, and set up and coded for the servers to run the place. I’ve seen the industry at its most physical and I’ve seen the bill along the way. I can tell you, plainly and clearly: the telecom industry owns the wire. I’ve laid it on one side and I’ve paid for it on the other, and there is no doubt in my mind that the telecom industry owns the Internet’s foundations.
At various points of the Internet you’ll see what I would call Open Owners. These would be groups, like universities, that participate in the Internet in the way it used to be used and collaborate, share, and are productive. You’ll find the free wireless groups and the government agencies and libraries around the world that provide access and content to the Internet. These folks are carrying the original spirit of the Internet far and wide, not just by their use of the Internet, but by their funding of it. Private buyers on both ends ask the telecom industry to give them a wire from one place to another.
Without these private participants the Internet would be what it was in the 80s. Think Gopher.
Then you have the Private Owners, like content providers. While a good number of groups in this class believe in the One True Internet (Google, Yahoo, Apple, etc.), they’re still in it for the money. They pay to be a part of the Internet so that others will pay them for being a part of the Internet. It’s valid capitalism and it works well, usually to the betterment of everyone. Sites with news, audio, video, and files have always been the more interesting and are without question the most popular destinations on the Internet today. Without these private participants the Internet would be what it was in the 80s. Think Gopher.
Now, I loved Gopher, and Usenet, and FIDONet, but there’s a time to move on and it was 10 years ago. Yes, HTML came around without financial cause, but look at how fast Spyglass and Netscape came up after that and took it by the horns and turned it into a war. It was capitalism that brought the web up to what it became, not purity of heart and soul. That’s what gave us XHTML/CSS as a cure for the tattered shards of tag soup the corporate browser wars gave us and that we named HTML 4.
The other half of the Private Owners are the privately-owned ISPs of America. There are ISPs in the Open Owners group (universities, public access points, and old government charters like Tenet), but the overwhelming majority of ISPs are in the private sector such as Earthlink, AT&T, and AOL. These are the companies that survived by making a fortune (and losing it) by hooking themselves up to the shared network and selling access to it. These are the guys that made the Internet both accessible to the average man, and full of idiots and horny teenagers.
Well, one day they announced they would let AOL members post to Usenet. Folks, it’s all gone downhill since that moment.
I remember the transition, too. I remember getting my Usenet access via a local ISP called Trip.net which, son of a gun, is still going. I used them in 1996, too. Impressive. Anyhow, I remember the endless and endlessly enjoyable flame wars of Usenet and the private content and features of CompuServe and AOL (both of which I was a member of; 76361.256 and an AOL name I’ve kept to this day as my private AIM address). One day AOL announced read-only access to Usenet. This was cool. Even cooler was that it would assemble the binaries for you and email them to you which, with a 14.4K modem, was refreshing as I could let it check overnight. Well, one day they announced they would let AOL members post to Usenet. Folks, it’s all gone downhill since that moment.
It wasn’t just the idea of newbies flooding the gates and getting into the nastiest parts of the Internet of yore, but that’s the moment that the private networks started really turning to the Internet for their content. At first it was just using the Internet to supplement existing, private content. Later, however, AOL added a piece of software that let you use your connection as an IP connection. Right around that time, CompuServe started offering PPP access via their dial-up numbers. Then Southwestern Bell came into the mix with their own ISP service (AT&T/SWB/SBC/AT&T being the Baby Bell in Texas).
Right there we pause the story for a moment, because this is the start of the problem. You have to understand this point because it’s what’s causing the blur to happen here. Just before this moment there were two kinds of businesses involved in this nest of networks. There were the network centers that housed the logic and there were the phone companies providing a wire from A to B. That wire just happened to carry IP traffic on it. It was otherwise far from special. It was really designed for digital voice data for large businesses, but it was such a pretty idea that people hooked a computer up to it and off they went. At this point, however, the phone company started to offer IP on their lines. Would you like IP? Buy this line and peer with us, instead. Now the telco is a peering point, not just a middleman.
After that, the Baby Bells (and all of the other telecom companies) got into the mix and became peering points for this grand Internet idea. They sold lines to the people and to other companies (and each other) to push this mix of networks around. It was great for the network in that more peers means more paths and so on. It was great for the consumer because more and more people could get on the network and share. What it did, however, was muddy the waters of “ownership” of this spaghetti bowl of cables. What was once a group of institutions and individuals paying cold cash to create an ad hoc international network of computers became Ma Bell and competitors providing IP service to the world from their private data centers. In one fell monopolistic swoop the telco industry had gone from middleman to master.
So with this huge network now even larger, and with more and more peers being telcos rather than institutions … who owns the Internet? Is it still the people, just because we create the content and would like to legislate ownership of the network? Or did we, the people, totally screw up and let the telcos take over the Internet from under our noses? It has been said that ninety-percent of ownership is possession. By that measurement the Internet is no longer open, no longer of the people, and is just a collection of cables inside the world’s private telcos that we dutifully pay for access to. In that scenario we are completely screwed and no longer control the future of the network without imposing unfair legislative limits on the ability of telcos to provide a valid service that they legitimately took from under our noses.
There are alternatives, but they are difficult. The first is to bring control back to the small companies of America. Those who can should choose to peer with private firms rather than their local telco. Sure, it eventually goes back to them, but it reduces their power because private peering firms have multiple peers and can drop misbehaving telcos. This is the best solution because it uses capitalism to solve a capitalistic problem. In other words: we let the market decide. Chance of success? About the same as Linux being a viable desktop in five years.
The other alternative is harsh, but would fix the problem for good. Federal anti-trust legislation that prohibits line providers from being their own client, even via a sub-company. Telcos can only deliver lines, not peering points. It’s harsh, and it’s not capitalist at all, but it would solve the problem until some other company got too big for its britches, but it’s hard to do that when you don’t own the lines.
It’s a difficult problem, with difficult answers, but this public Internet of ours is now wholly private because we ignored the consequences of our choices. Now we have to take back the Internet, and that’s going to be damned-near impossible.
That was a very well reasoned analysis of the current fiasco.
I’ve often felt that it was wrong to allow the so-called “Baby Bells” access to non-infrastructure or core service markets.
The networks that the Baby Bells are claiming to own were built with public funding and a government sanctioned monopoly on their core market (telecommunications infrastructure and telephone service). Remember, that AT&T used to be a nationwide company that held a goverment sanctioned monopoly on telecommunications services. The phone company in Los Angeles, CA was the same phone company as Austin, TX. One large, happy family of employees from coast-to-coast.
Deregulation, stemming from a Federal Court decision in the early 1980’s, has been slow and has allowed the Baby Bells to play the market at both ends, at the expense of consumers and businesses everywhere.
Here’s my opinion: The Baby Bells cannot be allowed to have it both ways. Since the government – via taxes – paid the Baby Bells to put the telephone wires everywhere, including where it was not profitable, we the people own the network. The Baby Bells are just leeches on this network that we’ve allowed to manage and maintain them. Again, the Baby Bells have received public monies to manage and maintain the network. The Baby Bells are allowed to compete in the service market as well. As the maintainers of the public telecommuncations infrastructure, they have unfair^1^ advantages over their competitors: 1. The company pays nothing for access to the telecommunications networks. This means it can price its services for less than its competitors in the service market. This means the company can leverage a monopoly in one market (voice telecommunications) to gain a monopoly-level service in another market (data services). Proof of concept: price a consumer level DSL line from SBC/AT&T or Verizon. Price the same connection from another company like Covad. 2. Service orders from it’s own customers are usually favored and fixed before service orders from competitors. The incumbent phone company is the only company allowed to connect, disconnect, or perform maintenance activities on the telecommunications networks. Competitors to the “Baby Bells” have to the Baby Bells for access to the public telecommunications networks, for each connection, disconnection, or repair order. The only option for the competitor is to install their own wires, from end-to-end. This would be fair, wouldn’t it? Yes, it would be fair except for the fact that public money paid for the existing infrastructure.
What does this have to do with the current proposal of having tiered data services? Everything.
The government, acting as “the will of the people” needs to take back these public (infrastructure) networks, and then lease them to private infrastructure-only companies. The infrastructure companies would be required to not enter the consumer and business-to-business service markets in any locale. They would have no conflict of interests or unfair goverment paid competitive advantages over their competitors.
The Baby Bells would need to decide which market that they want. Infrastructure: providing the physical wires from end-point to end-point or the far more profitable service market.
The physical wire market would be a nice, comfortable existance for a low-risk style company. Absolutely zero risk, competition, and very low profit. It or they would be charged with connecting, disconnecting, and maintaining the telecommunications network, ensuring that 911 emergency services were available (regardless of whether you have phone service or not – our tax money pays for these services).
The service market would have voice services, data services, and entertainment services (e.g. cable television). These service companies would either lease the public infrastructure wires or install their own. If the service companies want to charge Internet companies like Google, Yahoo, ebay, or Amazon for access to their customers let them do so. If the service company wants to charge their customers to access Google, Yahoo, ebay, or Amazon (or not block BitTorrents), let them do so.
This will give us a true market driven telecommunications industry, without unnecessary infrastructure duplication, and clearly delineate between public and private networks.
Wireless voice and data services are a thorny issue. It would be difficult to determine how much of the Baby Bells wireless networks were built with funds from the public, not to mention that there are a large number of independent tower owners.
After I finished typing this, it came to my attention that AT&T (remember: AT&T and SBC merged) is seeking to buy out BellSouth. See this URL for details.
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unxgeek@unxgeek.us
“Smile,” they said, “it could be worse.”
So I did, and it was.
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“Smile,” they said, “it could be worse.”
So I did, and it was.
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