Structural separation
I’ve been spending a lot of time with the 1956 At&T consent decree that was so disliked by Ma Bell. The incumbent disliked it because it commanded that AT&T act only as a common carrier - no other functions allowed. (It doesn’t say anything about precluding AT&T from using electronics in its network when it was acting like that carrier, by the way. It does command, however, that the company not go into other lines of business.)
Today a Gartner report (summary here) written with incumbent-customers in mind, bemoans a global move towards 1956-like limitations on telcos:
[O]wnership separation [is a] global trend[ that] will particularly impact developed countries where the telecom market is mature and regulators are trying to inject more direct market competition as a stimulus for innovation and greater investment in next-generation broadband.
The report defines “ownership separation” as “a carrier division with some of the network or the entire network is placed in a separate legal entity and owned by a company other than the parent company.” In other words, structural separation.
Now, Gartner isn’t happy about this, and says that this may interfere with “cost efficiencies currently enjoyed by vertically integrated carriers.” (In response, a comment reads: “What?! Who paid Gartner to make this report?”)
Over the last fifty years, we’ve succeeded in this country in completely subverting the principles that brought us the 1956 decree. A source of pain to AT&T (because it kept AT&T out of the computing business), and embarrassment to the Department of Justice (because it didn’t involve actual divestiture of any AT&T businesses), the decree had the merit of reminding AT&T that it was only a common carrier. All the Computer Inquiries that followed afterwards were also based on the assumption that there would be a common carrier in the picture. Now our carriers are all “uncommon” - all perfectly free to discriminate and vertically integrate.
But at least Gartner says structural separation is a trend. Here’s hoping that under the next Administration in this country that trend will reach our shores.
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when AT&T forces the purchase of a POTS line to obtain DSL, or Comcast forces the purchase of cable tv to obtain broadband, that’s forced bundling even though the internet service component may be net neutral in common carriage fashion - it’s two forms of content provided over the physical network which is not structurally separated between the provision of bandwidth/GBs as a commodity versus the content that flows over it
in this context, structural separation and net neutrality are versions of unbundling at different levels, where unbundling at the structural level tends to supersede the need for net neutrality at the higher level but not vice versa
if certain versions of net neutrality prevail absent unbundling, such as in the recent language of H.R. 5994 that allows the bundling of “prioritized service” with “data type”, the result is “neutral bundling” similar to that practiced already by AT&T and Comcast, which can force the price of internet access to very high levels, even though the pricing and TOS itself does not technically discriminate in violation of net neutrality
this opens the door to the touted “fast lanes” intended by large content providers and network providers for which smaller, independent content providers will be barred entry - not by way of the technically accessible “neutrally bundled fast lane” - but by prohibitively expensive minimums of bandwidth/GBs and other “neutral” TOS designed to force them into the slow “bus lanes” - when they need the exposure of the fast lane to compete but don’;t need the high minimums
this would shut down existing, unbundled, neutral stand-alone “fast lane” options that already exist within the broadband service component of a physical network via bandwidth tiers and GB caps - in this context, the proposed “fast lanes” are not a “premium service” for a higher price, but a higher price for existing service and the “bus lane” becomes a degraded service for the current price