Structural will
Most of the time when I talk about the need to treat internet access like a utility, I get amused smiles.
That's the thing we have to change — the idea that it's unthinkable (amusing, even) that we could take this increasingly singular but private relationship of people to broadband internet access and make it a public relationship.
But end-users really don't care whether their provider is a cable company or a telephone company — they think they're getting the internet. They're probably not even aware that a private company is providing internet access to them. And there are even a few people out there in the U.S., despite our best efforts, who don't understand that these private companies have every incentive to prioritize and manipulate their way into showing us “channels” instead of the internet.
This re-framing isn't easy. We haven't nationalized an industry in a while. It's not clear that our government would even be particularly good at making fast internet access into a true public priority and resource.
But as all other categories of former media fall away, as telephony, the press, the movie industry, the postal service, and broadcast all become part of an enormous digital pond, it makes less and less sense to treat access to this crucial informational resource like candy-bar sales — particularly when the market for access isn't itself competitive.
As I say, all I get is smiles when I say this. It happened again today, that amused smile. I hope by a couple of years from now the idea will be getting a different, and more respectful, reception.
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Are there any examples of an industry being nationalized with the consequences being greater efficiency and innovation, as opposed to the opposite?
It probably a reflection of the provenance of telecommunications, that it originated in inseparable integration that it has remained in private hands for so long.
Even when separation was possible (and the development of modular solutions) the inertia of a large comfortable incumbent prolonged the illusion that telecommunications, including the Internet, must be supplied by an integrated national organisation, or an oligopoly of such entities as an integrated solution of access and services.
Clearly the Internet, and the externalisation of standards and the potential for separation of services and infrastructure, do not require any such entity or integration of services and connectivity. Co-operation combined with reduced co-ordination costs means that small pieces loosely joined can do the job.
But structural separation is the only certain way to ensure carriage competition delivers best net neutral solutions and service competition provides best service solutions.