Right-Wing Socialism, or How Telecom Companies Want Your Internet
by Matt Stoller, Tue Nov 29, 2005 at 06:47:53 PM EST
Which brings me to the internet, and why telecom companies are trying to shut down what makes it great. I love the internet. In fact I think the internet is the only way to bring back public space to our democracy. It's also under threat. While I've detailed some of the problems with how IP law is structured, there's another side to the equation, which is our telecommunication laws. Doc Searls has an important essay up called 'Saving the Net: How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes' in which he details how big telcos are trying to make the internet a distribution vehicle for content, and nothing more. He points to this interview of Edward Whiteacre, the CEO of SBC Communications as evidence.
How concerned are you about Internet upstarts like Google (GOOG), MSN, Vonage, and others?How do you think they're going to get to customers? Through a broadband pipe. Cable companies have them. We have them. Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?
The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment and for a Google or Yahoo! (YHOO) or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!
This is quite radical. The internet works as it does because the pipes are neutral carriers. Now you buy internet access, but your provider can't tell you what to do on the internet. What Edward Whiteacre is suggesting is that the pipes be changed to favor certain approved content that has paid for the right to be carried on those pipes. He wants to centralize the internet and set up toll booths on it. Think it can't happen? Think again. It's pretty easy to change how people behave, just by making it a little harder to do things. So maybe SBC will make it slightly harder to access certain web sites in the name of filtering viruses or harmful content from children. Who opposes making the internet safe for children? Certainly not timid politicians.
Oh, we'll still have the internet, but it won't be this internet. After a few years or auto-updates to Windows, it'll be an internet with great consumer choice, with incredible video and audio selection, and terrific content to access whenever and wherever we want. There will be a fringe with access to a freewheeling space - perhaps 20% of the population - but by and large it will be a consumer's internet, like WebTV writ large.
That's the kind of internet the telcos want, one where Google can't profit from its innovative business without cutting in unproductive political bottlenecks like telecommunications companies in on the action. 'Oh but wait, Matt, you're crazy, telcos are efficient companies providing a market service. They should be rewarded for it.' Bullshit. They are socialist institutions dedicated to lobbying government and billing their customers. Don't believe me? Cue Edward Whiteacre, whining that he doesn't get enough government protection.
What's your approach to regulation? Explain, for example, the difference between you and Verizon in how you are approaching regulatory approval for Telco TV [digital-TV service offered by telecoms].The cable companies have an agreement with the cities: They pay a percentage of their revenue for a franchise right to broadcast TV. We have a franchise in every city we operate in based on providing telephone service.
Now, all of a sudden, without any additional payment, the cable companies are putting telephone communication down their pipes and we're putting TV signals. If you want us to get a franchise agreement for TV, then let's make the cable companies get a franchise for telephony.
If cable can put telephone down their existing franchise I should be able to put TV down my franchise. It's kind of a "what's fair is fair" deal. I think it's just common sense.
Whiteacre is asking for monopoly privileges from the government. This is not about the market at all, it's socialism for big corporations.
Now, the biggest problem for these telcos is municipal wifi, because that service undercuts the ability for telcos to charge a lot for a service that doesn't and shouldn't cost very much. Internet access is ridiculously cheap considering what it provides to the public. Cities already provide a host of sophisticated services such as electricity, education, public transportation, libraries, and waste disposal. Why is wifi any different? (Hint: It's not.) The right-wing likes to scream that muni wifi will mean that we won't have good technology because cities won't upgrade, but there's nothing here that suggests that private companies can't also provide internet services.
Aha, but telcos are ahead of the game. Congressman Pete Sessions (R-TX) wants muni-wifi outlawed, permanently. Sessions of course is doing this out of deep moral concern, not because he owns a lot of telco stock. And while New Orleans is providing free muni-wifi during its state emergency, it must stop because the law in Louisiana prohibits government-owned municipal wifi. Several states have similar prohibitions.
Democrats need to stand on the side of free municipal wireless access, and net neutrality laws. And while I'm not happy with Common Cause on some IP issues (mostly what they aren't working on), on this one they are right. The internet is too critical a resource to be controlled by telecom companies that have fundamental designs on changing the way the network operates. The internet should be a neutral platform that facilitates a free marketplace of goods, services, and ideas. Neither telecom companies nor right-wingers actually like free markets, however, so we'll have to make this happen ourselves. I can't wait to take back power.
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