Network data
We have no idea what Verizon or AT&T are actually doing with their networks. No clue. And it's unlikely that they'll willingly let neutral technical people (like CAIDA) take a look.
This is a huge legal/technical/policy problem. It costs money to get the equipment needed to measure the performance of these networks, even if access weren't an issue, and the money isn't flowing in. We don't have Bell Labs any more, or any replacement for it.
This means the policy decisions we're making are without empirical foundation. Baseless. Uninformed. Isn't the idea that we should know what we're talking about, whether we're focused on body counts in Iraq or packet treatment in Texas?
I'm not sure what the solution to this is — all I can say is that it seems to be a problem that inevitably leads to additional cascades of terrible problems. In addition to forming PACs and rising up in anger, the big online companies might want to force the collection of some neutral data.
Particularly now that FCC has, without a reviewable order, allowed Verizon to do whatever it wants [word doc — Copps statement]
It's A Wonderful Life
A colleague wrote to me and reminded me that the telcos waaay back in the days before 1995 wanted a particular approach to networked communications to prosper — managed communications, easily-controlled billing….X.500 was the shorthand he used. AT&T had no fondness for NSFnet. (We'll have to dig up the correspondence with Congress.)
We need the “It's a Wonderful Life” of the internet. Not the happy ending — the alternative middle.
What if the telcos had won at the outset? What if they had managed the managed network? Would we have had PCs in such profusion? Low-cost online applications? Many walled gardens? Would the internet have ended up at the center of things, as it has now?
Probably not. Bleak, very bleak.