Bret Swanson of The Discovery Institute has an important piece on Net Neutrality in today’s Wall Street Journal entitled “The Coming Exaflood.” He’s refering to the increasing flood of exabyte-level traffic (especially from high-def video) that could begin clogging the Net in coming years unless broadband networks are built out and upgraded to handle it. He states:
“[Net neutrality supporters] now want to repeat all the investment-killing mistakes of the late 1990s, in the form of new legislation and FCC regulation… This ignores the experience of the recent past–and worse, the needs of the future.
Think of this. Each year the original content on the world’s radio, cable and broadcast television channels adds up to about 75 petabytes of data–or, 10 to the 15th power. If current estimates are correct, the two-year-old YouTube streams that much data in about three months. But a shift to high-definition video clips by YouTube users would flood the Internet with enough data to more than double the traffic of the entire cybersphere. And YouTube is just one company with one application that is itself only in its infancy. Given the growth of video cameras around the world, we could soon produce five exabytes of amateur video annually. Upgrades to high-definition will in time increase that number by another order of magnitude to some 50 exabytes or more, or 10 times the Internet’s current yearly traffic.
We will increasingly share these videos with the world. And even if we do not share them, we will back them up at remote data storage facilities. I just began using a service called Mozy that each night at 3 a.m. automatically scans and backs up the gigabytes worth of documents and photos on my PCs. My home computers are now mirrored at a data center in Utah. One way or another, these videos will thus traverse the net at least once, and possibly, in the case of a YouTube hit, hundreds of thousands of times.
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I want to second Jim’s recommendation that you read his Regulation article discussing PFF’s new book on network neutrality regulation. He argues persuasively that each side in the network neutrality debate gives the other too little credit:
It is hard to pin down what exactly the Internet is. There are several versions, with convergence around the idea that the things making up the Internet can be described as a series of layers. At the bottom, there is the physical layer–the wires, cables, and fibers that Internet communications travel over. Next there is the logical layer, the routing rules that send packets of data from origin to destination. Next there is the application layer–the programs that people use to create content and send it from one place to another. (Think of e-mail programs, browsers, and the like.) Finally, there is the content layer. This is the actual material people send to each other in those e-mails, the websites that show up on their screens, and so on.
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Here‘s Harper on PFF on Net Neutrality in Regulation magazine.
My review of the Progress & Freedom Foundation book
Net Neutrality or Net Neutering: Should Broadband Services be Regulated (which starts on page 5 of the PDF) takes a sort of “pox on both your houses” approach while concluding that the opponents of public utility regulation for broadand have the better argument.
Here‘s Farber and Katz (with Faulhaber and Yoo) in the Washington Post.
I have come to the conclusion that the Net neutrality issue has become for tech policy what Angelina Jolie is to the world of Hollywood celebrity: big crowds; a caravan of reporters and photographers; swarms of groupies and gawkers… all these things follow wherever they go. That was the case again today in Las Vegas when a panel discussion took place at CES about Net neutrality.
Before a jam-packed room (many of whom were Washington lobbyists, reporters and analysts), Paul Misener, VP of Public Policy for Amazon, Tom Tauke Executive VP of Public Affairs for Verizon, and Deborah Platt Majoras the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission debated the future of Net neutrality (NN) regulation. Mike Feazel of Communications Daily moderated.
Feazel began by asking if there will be a Telecom Act in the new Congress and whether NN will be a part of it. Amazon’s Misener said that we will get a Telecom Act in this Congress and NN will be front and center. And it will pass. But Verizon’s Tauke disagreed saying that it is very unlikely we will see passage of a bill this session because “we don’t have the dynamics to pass a Telecom Act.” There is no major issue or compelling reason for action, Tauke said. Moreover, energy and environmental issues will trump telecom policy issues in the relevant committees of Congress now that the Democrats are in charge. And the franchising issue has largely been resolved with the FCC’s latest franchise reform order, he said. Plus, don’t forget about the Iraq debate, he noted. But Paul Misener said that Senators Dorgan and Snowe have already reintroduced their non-partisan NN bill this week and that legislation is expected shortly in the House.
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Via Julian, Christopher Yoo has an interview at Network Performance Daily. Art Brodsky has a rebuttal, and Yoo ripostes.
I have to say I don’t find this argument by Yoo terribly persuasive:
Allowing broadband providers to use different protocols can also expand the number of dimensions along which networks can compete with one another for business. Employing different protocols might permit smaller network players to survive by targeting sub-segments of the larger market, in much the same way that specialty stores do when confronted with competition from a low-cost, mass-market retailer. For example, network diversity might make it possible for three last-mile networks to coexist: one optimized for traditional Internet applications (such as e-mail and website access); a second designed to facilitate time-sensitive applications (such as streaming video and VoIP), and a third incorporating security features to facilitate e-commerce and to guard against viruses, spam, and other undesirable aspects of life on the Internet. By mandating that the entire Internet operate on a single protocol, network neutrality threatens to foreclose this outcome and instead force networks to compete on price and network size-considerations that reinforce the advantages already enjoyed by the largest players.
The whole point of the Internet is that it is (as the name implies) interconnected. An “Internet” service that only connected you to a subset of the world’s computer users would be dramatically less valuable than the current, public Internet.
But for quality of service to work, it would have to work from end to end. Congestion can happen at any point along the network, so it makes little sense to do a lot of work offering performance guarantees for the last mile while the backbone remains a best-effort network. So as far as I can see, any prioritization scheme would have to be adopted by the whole Internet. It wouldn’t make a lot of sense to have different ISPs running different protocols.
I’m also not sure I understand the point of the Akamai example, since I don’t believe anyone thinks that Akamai would become illegal under a network neutrality requirement. Obviously, if there’s language that would inadvertently ban Akamai, that would be something everyone would agree needs to be changed, but I haven’t seen an example of language that would make Akamai illegal.
As usual, my co-bloggers are falling down on the job when it comes to tooting their own horns. First, James Gattuso has an interesting article over at The American on AT&T’s concessions in the BellSouth merger:
Even those who favor net neutrality should be upset that this rule was imposed through the backdoor of the FCC, after failing to gain acceptance through Congress’s front door. Backdoor policymaking hurts the public, as the checks and balances of the normal policymaking process are short-circuited. More directly, hijacking merger reviews to alter policy hurts firms and their customers–instead of a fair review on the merits, transactions are held hostage to political whims. Will this become a precedent for future FCC reviews? Perhaps not–this case may be unique. But don’t count on it.
And on Cato’s website, here’s an MP3 of Jim Harper discussing his recent paper on data mining and government surveillance. If you haven’t had time to read the paper, here’s a chance to get a 5-minute summary in podcast format.
It seems that AT&T has made a 2-year network neutrality promise in order to get its merger with Bell South approved. The Los Angeles Times approves:
In order to win approval from the Federal Communications Commission for its $84.5-billion buyout of BellSouth, the reconstituted Ma Bell agreed Thursday to not offer for two years “any service that privileges, degrades or prioritizes” any data transmitted over its broadband network. In other words, AT&T guaranteed what has come to be known as “Net neutrality”–giving websites and services equal access to Internet users. The only exceptions are for AT&T’s new TV service and the managed networks it sells to businesses.
Net neutrality became an issue last year after AT&T and BellSouth executives talked about making online companies cover more of the cost of broadband networks. In particular, they raised the prospect of charging high-traffic companies such as Google an extra fee to improve the picture quality of online movies and TV shows. Such charges could help established companies fend off upstarts by erecting a cost barrier to entry, suffocating the next YouTubes and Flickrs in their cribs.
I’m not thrilled about this, but it could have the silver lining. Frankly, AT&T is already so much a creature of the state that I’m not sure I care very much if they’re under the thumb of the FCC for a couple more years. I’m far more worried about regulations being applied to smaller firms and new entrants that might not have as much clout with the FCC. If this deal helps to take the wind out of the sails of the activists who want to regulate the entire Internet, that could be a blessing.
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There are all sorts of year-end / best-of / Top 10 lists being put together right now, but I haven’t seen anyone offer up a “Most Important Tech Policy Developments of 2006” list. Geez, isn’t everyone else on the planet as interested in this nerdy stuff as we are?!
Anyway, I’d don’t have a top ten list, but I do have a nomination for the story that I think belongs on the top of such a list. I think the biggest tech policy story of 2006 was the heated political battle over Net Neutrality regulation and the fact that Congress did NOT pass legislation mandating it. It was a hell of a battle, pitting titans of industry against each other. And in intellectual circles it had policy wonks foaming at the mouth. (You can find all our rumblings on the topic here).
I don’t think this debate is over, but I’m not sure it will ever be as heated of an affair as it was this year. I also doubt that Net Neutrality mandates have nearly as good of a chance of passing through Congress this coming session since it is less likely there will be a major communications reform bill to attach it to. And there’s no way Net Neutrality regulation will pass as a stand-alone measure. There’s just too much opposition to it. It would have to be passed as part of some grand communications law reform compromise measure.
Anyway, I’d be interested in hearing what others think was the biggest tech policy story of 2006, or at least belongs on the Top 10 list.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.