In an email, Mike Bookey, author of “America at the Internet Crossroads,” raises an intriguing question about the Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006, introduced yesterday by members of the House Judiciary Committee.
Mike sees a significant “loophole” in the bill’s network neutrality protections. He bases this on a careful reading of the bill’s language (always a good idea with legislation) and some creative thinking about company strategies. The language in question is found in two related provisions of the bill:
Section 28(a)(1) It shall be unlawful for any broadband network provider to fail to provide its broadband network services on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms and conditions such that any person can offer or provide content, applications, or services to or over the network in a manner that is at least equal to the manner in which the provider or its affiliates offer content, applications, and services, free of any surcharge on the basis of the content, application, or service;
That long sentence is arguably the heart of the net neutrality provision. As it seems to clearly state, its protection applies to “broadband network services,” which are defined in another part of the bill:
Section 28(d)(3) the term ‘broadband network service’ means a 2-way transmission service THAT CONNECTS TO THE INTERNET [Mike’s emphasis] and transmits information at an average rate of at least 200 kilobits per second in at least one direction, irrespective of whether such transmission is provided separately or as a component of another service;
Mike then asks what I think is a good question:
How does the law prevent the following situation? The cable or telco access network provider walls off 99% of its private bandwidth from the Internet. This walled-off bandwidth is used to sell telco and cableco services and services from providers that agree to pay them premiums. The remaining 1% of the bandwidth used to connect end users to the Internet is non-discriminatory, and therefore satisfies the law. The effect of this situation is to starve the public Internet of bandwidth and render service providers on the Internet non-competitive.
Though I think the numbers Mike uses are purposely exaggerated to make a point, I’m inclined to think that his analysis of the language is on the money and that such a scenario would be legal under the proposed bill.
And since the top players in a still-consolidating tier of broadband access providers are all developing their own private backbones, it does seem that a more moderate and gradual version of Mike’s scenario could unfold.
Operators might, for example, begin by migrating some of their existing commercial arrangements (e.g., cable VOD) to IP delivery on a walled-garden IP service tier. All of these would be delivered end-to-end without travelling over the Internet. Operators could then begin to negotiate commercial “access-tiering” arrangements with more and more service providers, while simultaneously shifting more and more of their IP bandwidth to walled-garden services that also don’t travel on the Internet.
Over time, as Mike suggests, the effect would be “to starve the public Internet [i.e., service providers not paying premium carriage fees] of bandwidth and render service providers on the Internet non-competitive.”
Some folks might not consider this a problem, but I’d guess that most net neutrality advocates would, unless Mike and I are missing something.
Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 4:38 PM | Print | Comments (0)It’s tough keeping track of all the stand-alone network neutrality bills being introduced in Congress, all as a reaction to the Commerce Committee’s telecom reform legislation which offers only a mild (and many say, toothless) net neutrality provision. The latest: Senators Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND) introduced a bill, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, that bars broadband service providers from discriminating against, blocking or impairing any broadband service.
The bill also requires broadband providers to offer unaffiliated content and application providers the same speed, quality of service and bandwidth that the broadband providers offer to affiliated services. As usual, Public Knowledge CEO Gigi Sohn was quick to praise the Dorgan-Snowe bill (PK communications director Art Brodsky could give lessons to the rest of Washington in public policy PR)
The legislation from Senator Snowe and Senator Dorgan will make certain that issue of Internet freedom will be front and center as the Senate Commerce Committee debates and reshapes its important telecommunications legislation. We also would like to commend the original cosponsors, Commerce Co-chairman Daniel Inouye (D-HI), and Democratic Senators Barbara Boxer (CA), a member of the Commerce Committee, as well as Ron Wyden (OR), Patrick Leahy (VT), Hillary Rodham Clinton (NY) and Barack Obama (IL).Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 3:17 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Courtesy of the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit blog, this new report from the World Information Society that looks at the “digital opportunity” for 180 economies around the globe.
The Society, with the help of ITU and others, calculated a composite index of indicators to determine which countries offer the biggest digital opportunities (voice, data, video, IT and so forth). Korea, Japan and Denmark top the list in terms of digital growth prospects and the U.S. is nowhere to be found on this top ten list (it’s possible just because of how the index was computed that the U.S. is already saturated with digital opportunity and therefore comparatively smaller growth is to be found). Click on the thumbnail for a closer look at these top ten countries.
Even more interesting, the report presents broadband prices around the globe and here the U.S. ranks among the top countries with the lowest broadband prices measured in terms of speed/per dollar paid. However, it looks like the Society included Comcast’s promotion $20/month rate in its calculations rather than the standard price of $42+/month.
Nevertheless, the following table shows that broadband prices around the globe, measured in terms of speed per dollar paid, are dropping.
| Lowest Broadband Prices Globally | ||||||
| Rank | Economy | Company | Speed Kbit/s | Price/Mo. US $ | US$/100 Kbit/s | Change 2005 - 2006 |
| 1 | Japan | Yahoo BB | 51,200 | $ 31.19 | $ 0.07 | -13% |
| 2 | Korea | Hanaro | 41200 | $ 40.59 | $ 0.08 | 0% |
| 3 | Netherlands | Internet Access | 20480 | $ 27.97 | $ 0.14 | -81% |
| 4 | Taiwan | Chunghwa | 12288 | $ 22.67 | $ 0.18 | 0% |
| 5 | Sweden | Bredbandsbolaget | 24576 | $ 56.08 | $ 0.23 | -7% |
| 6 | Singapore | Starhub | 30720 | $ 73.17 | $ 0.24 | -85% |
| 7 | Italy | Libero | 12288 | $ 37.23 | $ 0.30 | -74% |
| 8 | Finland | Elisa | 24576 | $ 85.64 | $ 0.36 | -51% |
| 9 | France | Free | 10240 | $ 37.29 | $ 0.36 | -90% |
| 10 | U.S. | Comcast | 4096 | $ 20.00 | $ 0.49 | 0% |
| 11 | Germany | Freenet.de | 18287 | $ 30.95 | $ 0.52 | 0% |
| 12 | U.K. | Pipex | 8128 | $ 50.89 | $ 0.63 | -54% |
| 13 | Hong Kong | Netvigator | 6144 | $ 51.17 | $ 0.83 | 0% |
| 14 | Portugal | Sapo | 8128 | $ 75.82 | $ 0.93 | 0% |
| 15 | Canada | Bell Canada | 4096 | $ 41.26 | $ 1.01 | -4% |
| Average | 18287 | $ 44.33 | $ 0.42 | -51% | ||
| Source: ITU | ||||||
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 12:55 PM | Print | Comments (1)
In the wake of the NSA calling records scandal, the issue of privacy and why it matters to folks is getting a lot of ink. Security expert Bruce Schneier has this essay in Wired News that makes an eloquent case for why even innocent individuals should worry about having their activities monitored or uncovered.
Those who would violate the privacy of others say “If you’re not doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?” This argument is used not only by the government but also by employers and litigants and enemies and anybody who wants to get their hands on our private information for their own purposes.
Schneier answers this question by noting that information on even the most innocent individual can be twisted to fit some cooked-up argument of wrong-doing.
Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, “If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged.” Watch someone long enough, and you’ll find something to arrest — or just blackmail — with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies — whoever they happen to be at the time. Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we’re doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.
When someone has access to our private thoughts, activities and feelings, we are simply no longer safe.
For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that — either now or in the uncertain future — patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:23 AM | Print | Comments (1)
The debate du jour is whether Silicon Valley is in the midst of another bubble because untried and uproven businesses are attracting big-ticket investments and rumored ridiculous valuations (Facebook anyone?). Yet, most of us concede that something just feels different now when compared to the slightly hysterical optimism of 1999.
Gary Rivlin has this piece today in the New York Times that explains, in part, what’s different now and the answer is: VC discipline. In the dot.com heyday, VCs rushed to invest in the latest start-up in fear of missing the boat and without conducting proper due diligence. A lot of now-laughable companies raised obscene amounts of money this way.
Those days are over, Rivlin writes.
Despite the financial drubbing suffered by those who invested in the venture funds raised in the late 1990’s, rich individuals, pension managers and others have been eager in recent years to invest once again. This time around, however, many of the same venture capitalists who raised billion-dollar funds in 1999 and 2000 are now raising more modest-size funds of $250 million to $400 million. V.C.’s are turning away cash — often saying no to many more potential investors than they tell yes.
While some crazy schemes get fast funding today too, calmer heads are prevailing more often than not.
Nowadays, according to an informal survey of venture capitalists, they typically spend a couple of months doing due diligence before investing in a start-up. Every once in a while, they say, they might cut a check within a couple of weeks of learning about a potential deal — but that’s if they have been presented with an enticing opportunity to invest in a nifty money-making idea being peddled by a set of serial entrepreneurs, rather than a me-too scheme packaged by a group of man-child M.B.A.’s, none of whom have a convincing plan for how they might one day turn a profit.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:00 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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