While we’re waiting
Back in early July, we heard that the McCain tech policy (eight months behind the Obama tech policy) was going to be released in… July. It’s August, it’s humid, and no policy.
We can predict to some extent what the in-process policy will say.
The bottom line: Sen. Obama sees the promise of technology. He understands that technology policy should be closely tied to this country’s economic policy, because technology may provide answers — solutions — for our sagging standing in the world.
Sen. McCain, from all we can tell, thinks technology is a problem. We’ve all heard the line from the Chronicle article last week:
McCain said he is well aware that technology “does drive the news. It is changing the shape of the news. … It’s changing the information age, and I’ve got to stay up with it.”
He added, “But I am forcing myself … let me put it this way, I am using the computer more and more every day.”
The problem isn’t that he doesn’t use a computer. The problem is that he thinks it’s acceptably funny to shrug away the entire ecosystem.
Sen. McCain is much more interested in offshore drilling than innovation.
He’s bought into the idea that the “free market” in highspeed internet access in this country is functioning just fine - when in fact we’re failing on every measure. Enormous incumbents have successfully avoided competition by facilitating ongoing regulatory gymnastics, prices are high, and speeds are slow.
Sen. McCain’s got that bemused, “let the kids play around” tone when it comes to technology, even as the country slumps and looks backwards towards its prouder days.
We need new ideas. Those new ideas will generate economic growth and get us out of this hole, someday, with a lot of effort. Tinkering around with capital gains breaks for big companies is not going to do it - we need a concerted, well-led, public effort to invest in the internet access infrastructure the country needs. There is no greater source of new ideas than the internet, and no greater source of hope for our economic future than better technology policy.
Back in 1904 the “Good Roads” movement gathered strength in this country. We had ignored this basic infrastructure and our roads were covered in mud and deeply rutted. It was embarrassing; other countries had invested in their roads and were able to get move their goods to market much more easily. It took leadership to dig ourselves out. One writer said at the time, “If America be the most progressive nation in the world, her citizens will not much longer endure medieval discomforts when they go out to mingle with their fellows and market the fruits of their fields.”
Our basic communications transport infrastructure today is internet access, and we’re in some medieval pain right at the moment. Sen. Obama understands this.
It’s not just internet access that Sen. Obama understands. It’s technology generally. Here’s a paragraph from his technology policy:
The 21st century tools of technology and telecommunications have unleashed the forces of globalization on a previously unimagined scale. They have “flattened” communications and labor markets and have contributed to a period of unprecedented innovation, making us more productive, connected global citizens. By maximizing the power of technology, we can strengthen the quality and affordability of our health care, advance climate-friendly energy development and deployment, improve education throughout the country, and ensure that America remains the world’s leader in technology.
I don’t want Sen. Obama stuck in front of a screen all the time. I just want him to understand what people using millions of graphical screens networked together are capable of. I think he does.
Sen. McCain? I’m still waiting.
Battling over clouds
More than 40 years ago, the FCC was worried about telephone companies using their power over communications to control the then-nascent (and competitive) data processing marketplace. The Bell System at that point was already banned from providing services that weren’t common carriage communications services (or “incidental to” those communications services).
In Computer 1, the Commission tried to distinguish the use of computers for processing information from the use of computers as part of communications, with the goal of not allowing the Bell System into the data processing business.
In a 1999 article in the Texas Law Review, Steve Bickerstaff pointed out that Computer 1 meant that no one could provide a “computer utility” service. The Bell System couldn’t as a matter of regulation, and no one else could because they’d be completely dependent on the good graces of the Bell System for transmission. There weren’t enough highspeed lines to make a computer utility viable, and other companies probably didn’t want to test the regulatory boundaries anyway - they didn’t want to suddenly become telecommunications carriers by providing transport to remote computing services.
Today, we’d call the “computer utility” something different - we’d use the term “cloud computing.”
Fast-forward: Computer I was the right decision, arguably, in that it allowed the internet to come into being. Our government made a number of policy decisions (and delayed action in a number of ways) that supported internet access, as Bickerstaff describes.
Since then, Computer I and the divestiture conditions that continued the Computer I regime have been completely dismantled. More than that - they’ve been reversed. Now the telephone companies are *only* in the data processing business, which we now call “enhanced services” or “information services.” No more common carriage transmission. Nice note from Bickerstaff, writing, remember, in 1999: “Mostly escaping attention has been the successful effort of the BOCs to position themselves as a very potent future force in the Internet market.”
You can reframe the net neutrality battle as an argument for re-imposing the restrictions of Computer I. Keep these companies from providing “information services”! Put them back in the “transmission” box!
That hasn’t happened - yet. Meanwhile, though, what about cloud computing? Bickerstaff suggests that the conditions for cloud computing emerging would have to be (1) an increase in highspeed internet access, (2) increasing frustration with PCs, and (3) the existence of ample competitors to provide carriage.
Let’s say the first two conditions have been met now. The third is still a major problem. Yet there are companies - including Google - who have a great interest in providing the cloud. What will happen?
The carriers have no particular reason to give up voluntarily on the regulatory gains they’ve made over the last 40 years. Google is doing its best to open up or limit the control of the carriers (plus finding alternative pathways), but surely wants to move forward with the cloud more than it wants to win on principle. Of course, I could be wrong.
So many questions - is cloud computing desirable? Are people willing to possibly lose access to their entire portfolio of stuff if their internet connection goes down? If cloud computing is desirable, will companies that are good at clouds be striking deals with the companies that have a lock on transmission? Or will the companies that have a lock on transmission be emerging with clouds of their own?
The rock star, the Christian Coalition, and NN
Yesterday’s House Judiciary hearing (witness statements and archived video here) had a deeply political angle - what committee should have jurisdiction over network neutrality issues - but also revealed to me that:
We’re seeing the moment when Hollywood, law enforcement, and the network access providers publicly attempt to join hands in favor of monitored/monetized network access.
I loved meeting Damian Kulash and hearing him testify. His opposite number (for purposes of the hearing) was the president of the Songwriters Guild, Rick Carnes. Carnes was there to talk about piracy, p2p file-trading destroying his industry. Here’s the angle, from Carnes’s point of view: isn’t it true mandating neutral internet access won’t allow network access providers to watch for copyrighted files?
And then there was the “but what about pornography” line of questioning. Although the Christian Coalition representative, Michele Combs, was there to testify about the importance of neutral network access for speech of all kinds (and it was great to see the alliance with the ACLU), the direction of questioning seemed to be: isn’t it true that mandating neutral internet access won’t allow network access providers to watch for nasty files of various kinds?
There are many responses to both of these points.
Copyright infringement is a judgment call, not something that can be figured out automatically at the network level;
screening for infringing files will make the last mile grind to a halt;
network access providers will lose their immunity from copyright claims if they search for these files;
given the concentrated market for internet access, the idea of screening for (and filtering out) particular content creates the opportunity for a great deal of anticompetitive mischief;
content-layer applications are a far better place for this kind of screening - they know what artists they have licenses with, and they can actually respond to notices under the DMCA structure.
On the indecency etc. front, same kinds of arguments:
there’s a dramatic risk of overblocking, threatening innocent speech;
it’s impossible to tell in advance which packet bears the “wrong” kind of flesh tones;
screening will cause the last mile to grind to a halt;
network access providers already cooperate with law enforcement;
we should go after behavior, not tech mandates that will burden all uses of the network;
etc.
But it’s a concerted theme. Avoid network neutrality by summoning up all the evils that it will loose upon the world. Never mind that law still applies online, and that the idea of neutral access is not predicated on facilitating unlawful activity; never mind the costs to all users of creating a carefully (and invisibly) filtered access regime; never mind the outright impossibility of the task - just do it.
It seems to me that it is not in the long-run interests of network access providers to be too closely tied to any particular content industry representative, or set of representatives, given the dramatic change in liability risk that such a partnership represents; it also seems to me that it is not in the long-run interests of law enforcement to push users towards a dramatic uptick in the use of encryption technologies; and it seems clear that it is in no one’s interest to establish a kind of private police force in this highly-concentrated market for highspeed internet access. Mischief, unaccountability, arbitrariness, censorship for commercial reasons - why would we want this?
I had my picture taken with the guys from OK Go. It was an interesting hearing. I’m hoping that these various industries discover their differing interests soon.
“The broadband revolution”
The International Telecommunications Union recently issued a press release announcing with joy the release of “the first set of global standards for Internet Protocol TV (IPTV).” A key sentence:
A combination of voice, Internet and video services over a single broadband link and from a single provider is foreseen as the ultimate goal of the broadband revolution.
Those of you who lived through What Is Broadband Good For? with me last summer (first post here) know that the word “broadband” is a pet bugaboo of mine. It’s a word that answers a lot of policy questions in a particular way. It connotes (and denotes) a speeded, managed “service” that happens to use the Internet Protocol but is ultimately completely within the discretionary control of the network provider. So when the ITU talks about “the broadband revolution,” they mean (I think) the rise of these speeded, managed “services” provided by telephone companies. And the stated goal — made express in this press release — is to combine “services” over single broadband links and “from” a single provider. Revolutionary! Remarkably similar to cable television with a cellphone overlay.
I’m not going to say “I told you so,” but this is why the AT&T/BellSouth merger conditions a year ago were not unmixed great news. I said at the time (so I guess I am saying I told you so) that AT&T’s promise as part of that merger to keep its “wireline broadband Internet access service” neutral didn’t actually cover its planned IPTV service, which it calls its “AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet U-verse Enabled” service. That won’t be neutral - ever - unless things change rather dramatically in this country. I think consumers will be offered “internet” as *part* of their subscription to IPTV, IPTV will definitely affect “bandwidth management,” and “internet” won’t be what we thought it was.
Giving way to the web world
Congratulations to Public Knowledge for leading the way (gathering together Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, EDUCAUSE, Free Press, Media Access Project and U.S. PIRG) and asking the question: Why should wireless carriers be permitted to discriminate in their allocation of short codes? Their filing is here.
It’s a clever piece of work, this filing, saying, in effect, “We think that short codes (and provision of text messaging services generally) should be treated as Title II, common carriage, services. But even if they’re not, you can apply the nondiscrimination obligations of Title II through your Title I authority.” (The filing also explains what short codes are; they’re handed out, essentially, by the wireless carriers’ trade association.)
Now, if you understand that last paragraph, you’ve probably studied U.S. communications law at some point in your life. But most people will have no idea whatsoever why this is significant, or why PK is talking about Titles at all. (What is this, real estate?)
The central thing to grasp here, with both hands, is that we have a strange legal structure in the U.S.: just as most of the interest, enthusiasm, and money has flowed to mobile wireless devices and the internet (and, soon, to mobile wireless devices accessing the internet, with any luck), the law has flowed *out* of that area. We don’t know what the nondiscrimination obligations are for wireless carriers and internet access providers. We suspect they’re minimal or non-existent, given one thing and another. And PK and others would like that situation to change - they’d like to see nondiscrimination requirements with teeth and meaning.
They have many good reasons for this. Nondiscrimination means capital can flow to new online/wireless devices and applications with some assurance that the carrier won’t be able to tweak things to favor its own business plans. Nondiscrimination means one point of view won’t be favored over another. Nondiscrimination means that carriers won’t be able to act as gatekeepers, deciding on winners and losers.
The big game here, the place this is all going, is the battle over access to the internet. We don’t have any statutory language making clear what “internet access” means - what it requires, what the limits are to “reasonable network management,” and all the rest. This PK petition is an incremental step - it’s asking for some definition of the limits to short code management in the wireless world. But that’s potentially a proxy for a larger move.
Content is not king online, as it turns out. Communication is. Raph Koster has a big recent presentation up on his blog telling the gaming world that their lunch is being eaten by the web. Everything’s flowing to the web. As Koster puts it:
the hot platform is the net
the hot audience is the non-gamer
the hot feature is other players
the hot technology is connectivity
the hot game is a mini-game
But the web world is under tremendous pressure in the US, as it is worldwide. No standardized definition of “internet access” in a place where there isn’t a lot of competition for access is leading to an awful lot of discretion and control being placed in the mitts of the carriers. Without a legal framework designed to fit this world, and without choices, all we’re left with is construing the carriers’ terms of service (!) and attempting to interpret a statute that makes as much sense as a law school exam hypothetical.
So here we are, giving way to the web world as a matter of practicality, and with only a patched-up, scruffy, hopeless statute to work with.
We need some creative leaps here, some ingenuity, some big merging of idea-spaces in a way that can be integrated with reality. (New favorite book: Smart World, by Richard Ogle.) We need a new administration and a new telecommunications law optimized on structural separation and the centrality of communication — rather than carriers’ revenues.
Comcast and “network management”
EFF’s recent report on the Comcast Affair [pdf] is worth paying attention to. It’s a thoughtful and easy-to-understand exploration of Comcast’s injection of “reset” packets into online communications. (I wrote briefly about this here.) EFF is also letting us know how we can see packet spoofing for ourselves - here.
There are three myths that EFF pays particular attention to - ways of explaining Comcast’s activity that have been themselves injected into the public discussion of this issue in order to smooth things over.
“This is just network management.” EFF points out that there are many more reasonable things that ISPs can do to make sure that bandwidth hogs don’t crowd out more moderate users. For example, Comcast could dynamically limit the amount of data per second that any user could transmit, based on the congestion levels of its network. This would affect only those users that were downloading very large files.
“We’re just delaying some traffic.” EFF says this is an “incomplete and misleading” description of what Comcast is doing. They point out that inserting “reset” packages will cause some software to just stop working. Only if the software tries to reattempt connection indefinitely, and only if Comcast jams only part of the time rather than all of the time, will packet forgeries merely delay communications. Otherwise - this forgery will keep the connections from persisting.
“No one gets hurt by this practice.” Here’s where EFF makes its most substantial contribution. Developers of software get hurt when they can’t rely on adherence to online standards. When the functioning of TCP/IP is within the discretion of the carrier, developers have to ask permission in order to launch anything new. In particular, more efficient ways of distributing video may be frustrated by Comcast’s behavior. (Which helps Comcast.)
Someone from a reasonable Northern European country forwarded a copy of the EFF reports to me saying, in effect, “In our local context this would create quite a parliamentary riot. I wouldn’t know whether the same applies to the US.”
EFF tells us that Comcast is the second largest ISP in the U.S. They *are* internet access for millions of Americans. This EFF report, and the AP story that ran in October, should be kept in bright light as we wait patiently for a new administration to come to power in Washington.
Unbridled discretion and prior restraint: the Verizon and Comcast stories
Let’s say that providing communications infrastructure is an inherent function of a state. Most people think of the internet as a telephone system, and most people think the telephone companies aren’t supposed to choose which calls will go through based on their content. People think that because they think internet access, like telephone access, is a utility — like electricity conduit, water pipes, etc. — that has something to do with the government, and the government isn’t supposed to discriminate.
If it’s true that there’s something about communications infrastructure that is government-like, or government-related, then the companies involved in providing that infrastructure may have obligations to the public not to interfere with the speech of those using their facilities. This makes sense in the current market context, which isn’t very competitive.
(These obligations wouldn’t extend to the applications used by people online. If the infrastructure is the water pipe, then online applications are the soup made out of the water. Or something like that.)
These obligations include, under U.S. law, a respect for free speech.
Even if the network providers don’t have a legal obligation to respect free speech under current law (because they’re not “state actors,” a term that has a thicket of caselaw surrounding it), the role they play in society carries with it an obligation to respect this legal regime.
And yet. The network providers want to have complete control over what speech goes through and what doesn’t (BitTorrent v. streaming video from their partners). They want some speech to arrive more efficiently than other speech (tiering v. the “best efforts” network that is the internet). They want to have, in effect, power over a licensing regime. But that licensing regime carries with it the power to offer no choices at all. It has no objective limitations.
If a state government did this, we’d be horrified. We’d say that allowing the government to pick and choose which speech goes through allows that government to engage in viewpoint discrimination. We’d say that the government was engaging in prior restraints on speech. We’d say this is unconstitutional censorship.
We’re usually deeply skeptical of licensing schemes that grant unbridled discretion to government officials. Why be unsuspicious of the filtering actions of these state-like network providers?
The petitions filed in connection with the Comcast spoofing are asking, in essence, for narrow, objective, and definite standards to guide the licensing authority of the network providers. If they have to have “network management” control, then let’s say what constitutes legitimate network management.
Otherwise we’ve just set up a system of uncontrolled discretion in the hands of a few large companies that grant us access to the internet.
Economic growth and internet access
I’m on my usual hunt for economic growth citations. Two recent useful ones:
1. UK Competitiveness Minister Stephen Timms says that the UK needs a fiber plan:
“Effective use of technology enables economic growth,” . . . . “We have hardly any fibre-to-home connections. As far as I’m aware, we have none. There are 900,000 in the US and eight million in Japan. We’re not suffering yet, but communications applications with higher [bandwidth] needs are not far behind. We need timely take-up.”
[Thanks to Dirk van der Woude for the link.] This strikes a different note than I heard from Ofcom earlier this year. In April, Ofcom head Ed Richards made it clear that he wasn’t thinking of internet access or telecommunications policy being part of broader economic/industrial policy. Mr. Timms is a welcome addition to the scene, and I understand that he’s well-connected to PM Gordon Brown.
2. Morgan Stanley recently weighed in, saying that the economic growth rate for the U.S. isn’t very strong - down to 2% from 3%. In general, Mary Meeker opines, the “US [is] less relevant to global economy - US share of global GDP has declined steadily since 1999 to 19% of GDP.”
3. Mark Lloyd of the Center for American Progress presented testimony earlier this week. My favorite part:
The telecommunications and cable industries have strong incentives to limit local investment in broadband. It is perfectly understandable for the industry to squeeze as much out of their old infrastructure or to delay investment in high-cost areas until they can be certain of an adequate return. This is smart, efficient business. And if we were considering the distribution of hula hoops or video games we would applaud this approach. But we are not concerned about a market in trifles. We are concerned about the health, education, economic viability, and public safety of our nation. We need national leadership to establish a national broadband policy.
We need some new ideas over here in the U.S. that will help spur economic growth - and a key place for idea-generation is online. We’re not talking about hula hoops or tunafish sandwiches, both of which are also sold by private companies. Online communication is different.
Tomorrow - back to the white spaces. Did you see this terrific NYT piece?
How newspapers and broadcasters are different
The advent of the digital age has put both newspapers and television broadcasters — until not too long ago the arbiters of opinion and taste in America — under pressure. It’s hard for hardcopy newspapers to survive in a craigslist time, and they generally can’t force people to pay for their content online. It’s hard for broadcasters to differentiate their offerings, and so they are starting to release shows online.
But newspapers (unlike broadcasters) seem to get the idea that they’re better off with an open internet than a closed, cell-phone-like internet. I was happy to see the New York Times editorial today on the importance of the Verizon/NARAL issue:
We have long been concerned about the potential threat to free speech and a free press as communications migrate from old-fashioned telephone lines, TV broadcasts and printing presses to digital networks controlled by unregulated private companies. The threat stopped being theoretical recently when Verizon Wireless censored political speech on one of its mobile services. . . . Given this chilling experience, the Federal Communications Commission should quickly issue regulations that also bar interference with text messaging. Unfortunately, the F.C.C. is in the thrall of the carriers, and the Bush administration has an unblemished record of siding with corporations over the rights and safety of American citizens. That means Congress will have to take the lead, as it must on other issues affecting the mushrooming world of digital communications.
What’s great about this editorial is that it takes the long view. It recognizes that this fight isn’t just about “short codes,” but about the future of communications generally. The Times clearly takes the view that communications carriers - even wireless carriers - aren’t like “newspapers.” Newspapers get to choose what they print, and can’t be forced to “carry” any particular speech. Companies providing access to the internet don’t - shouldn’t - get to pick winners and losers in the marketplace of communications.
The editorial also picks up on the current political reality: the FCC simply is not going to do anything that disrupts the carriers’ business plans. Rather than ignore online communications, or say they don’t matter, the newspaper calls for Congressional action to bring our now-ancient communications law (1996!) up to date. This is brave stuff.
It’s something a broadcaster probably wouldn’t say. Sure, they’re under pressure from the internet. So they’d rather avoid it — by finding a way to hook up with cable systems that don’t have common carriage obligations (but can be forced to carry broadcast signals), and fighting any unlicensed uses of white spaces with innumerable lobbyists “red in tooth and claw.” They must want things both ways: special all-American status, so that must carry rules stay in place and we push the country through a digital transition optimized for broadcast, and affiliation with traditionally-proprietary, newspaper-like cable systems that can freely discriminate between transmissions.
Maybe we should put this to a vote. Who would we vote off the communications island? Who has to go? I’m hoping newspapers can stick around (albeit in different, online forms). Broadcasters, on the other hand…
The big picture: Why the Verizon/NARAL flap matters
I arrived in DC in the middle of last night without a phone charger, having left mine in Manhattan last weekend. So this morning my first stop was a Verizon Wireless store downtown. Right in the store, in a corner, I plugged in my phone and called back someone who had a lot of questions about yesterday’s kerfuffle. Sitting on the floor, I tried to explain why this story matters.
[The convenience of the VZ store downtown (and in fact the ubiquitousness of those stores in most cities in the US) is a telling sign, so although I certainly recognize that it might seem like abusing their hospitality and electricity to rail about them from their own sales floor I decided to use it as an element in this story. Thanks, Verizon Wireless.]
Did VZ act illegally? No. Although the regulatory story here is tricky, the bottom line is that although the FCC could require that short codes be offered on a nondiscriminatory basis, they don’t. The Communications Act says that commercial cellular providers have to act in a nondiscriminatory fashion to the extent they are providing “commercial mobile services.” But “commercial mobile telephone services” are defined as services that are interconnected with the traditional phone network - reachable via dialing a phone number. Arguably, the short codes that the carriers allow people to subscribe to (”send me weather reports daily for $2.99 a month!”) are not “phone number” services. They’re private numbers controlled by the carrier. So they’re not covered by this nondiscrimination mandate. And VZ and all the rest of the carriers have many rules about who gets allocated a short code - I linked to those rules yesterday.
If VZ didn’t act illegally, why should we care? The shock of the public in learning that wireless carriers don’t act like common carriers should tell us something. From the consumer’s perspective, a communication (for data, to a person, using any device, whatever) is a communication. We assume that communications that feel just like phone calls are supposed to be provided on a common carriage, nondiscriminatory basis. We think of communications as a utility, like electricity or water, that is regulated by the government. It’s alarming to find out that these gigantic wireless carriers think of themselves as providing a private service within which they can discriminate for any reason or no reason at all.
But isn’t the wireless market competitive? Why would we need government intervention? Here’s where the long view is important. Wireless prices have been steadily rising since 1999, at the same time that the industry has been concentrating: twelve wireless carriers that were independent as of 1999 have combined (through merger, spinoff, or joint venture) into these four large wireless carriers - Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile. Verizon and AT&T already control 51% of the wireless market in the US and are growing very quickly. Verizon ($22.6 billion operating cash flow) and AT&T ($17.8 billion operating cash flow) combined have 64% of the net additions to wireless subscriptions and 120 million subscribers. These are rich networks that are getting richer.
But the salient marketplace isn’t necessarily the market for wireless phone calls. These same two companies, Verizon and AT&T, control DSL internet access through regional monopolies across the country, and offer these wireless services as part of packages that tie together traditional phone services, “IPTV” access, and internet access. Everything is bundled. The elements of these bundles don’t compete against each other, really. And, as readers of this blog are tired of hearing, we don’t have real competition for highspeed internet access.
But this issue is all about wireless phone calls. So what? This issue matters because Verizon and AT&T see the wireless future - and we should too. These phone companies are making their key revenue in the wireless area, and they like the control that they have there. They understand that we’ll all be accessing all data/interaction/people using mobile handsets, and they’d like to wrest control of these communications from the PC arena - which is traditionally more open. They’d like to have mobile phone standards, which allow network providers to charge for every transaction we do using a handset, apply to all of our interactions. They’d like all applications to have to ask permission before they can be accessed - because that will allow the carrier to charge. So they’re hoping to move away from the traditional phone-common-carriage model to the “future” wireless-carrier-private-actor model as both a regulatory matter and as a business imperative, and they have the market power to do this.
That’s why this story matters. More than a billion handsets will be bought around the world next year. We’ll all be going online using mobile devices. If the wireless “we get to discriminate” model of regulation applies to handsets in the U.S., the mobile carriers will be able to act as gatekeepers in the marketplace of ideas, choosing winners and losers. The fact that a Verizon lawyer was empowered to say NARAL’s texts were “unsavory” as a matter of company policy
is hugely important - Verizon may have withdrawn this particular decision (smart move), but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
We have to decide what model for communications regulation we want. Do we want the carriers to decide what we do online, or do we want the carriers just to be carriers? “Online,” “cell phone,” “telephone,” and “cable” all feel the same to the consumer. It’s all just data traveling fast. The regulatory reluctance of the FCC and the weirdly out-of-date structure of the Communications Act are allowing for differential treatment of the same kinds of transactions — the FCC knows this, and so it is strongly leaning in the deregulatory direction. “We’ll treat everything the same way and everything will be a private network. The market will be victorious!” But as a matter of social policy and our own future, we should sharply question that direction. We don’t have enough competition or enough enlightened, nondiscriminatory communications companies to allow us to be confident that the market will be able to do anything. We should move back towards common carriage for telecommunications - which will require that control over transport be separated from content.
So Verizon Wireless stores are everywhere, and incredibly convenient, because we’re addicted to these devices. They’ll be even more important in the years to come. But we shouldn’t be addicted to the regulatory model that currently governs our use of these devices. This will take leadership to change.