I finally got around to scanning through this month’s Learning & Leading with Technology, and was instantly captivated, infuriated, depressed, and provoked by Anita McAnear’s Issue Oriented piece, The Net at Risk. McAnear overviews some of the high points of a recent Bill Moyer’s program, The Net at Risk, which you can view on the web. I was moved to watch about half of the piece yesterday afternoon, and knowing that I will not have another chance before Monday, I wanted to go ahead and share some of my notes. But for a better thought out and crafted overview, check out your December/January issue of Learning & Leading, or click to a PDF of McAnear’s article at the ISTE web site.
The program is essentially about the telecoms’ interest in and lobbying for control of the Internet, and their apparent lack of interest in actually improving the Internet, to keep us in line with the service and cost enjoyed by many other industrial countries around the world. For instance, we, in the U.S. pay about $40 a month for 1 Megabit of service. I’m afraid that I am not sure exactly what a megabit means, but, according to the program, Japan and South Korea enjoy one hundred times that speed for the same price.
At the heart of it is the claim that the Telecoms promised, in the early 1990s, that with rate hikes and $25 billion in tax right-offs, that they would provide information superhighway service. For instance, 5,000,000 households in New Jersey would have 40 megabit service by 2006. Today, no household enjoys service near that fast.
The program blames federal and state telecommunications commissions for not holding the telecoms to their promise. They’ve (telecoms) walked away with 128% increase in their revenues, and they have not reinvested it back into the networks, as we continue to use, what the program refers to as 19th century technology — copper.
The program also told the story of Lafayette, Louisiana, who, in an effort to attract business and to keep their creative children at home, decided that they did not want to wait for the Telecoms. Electricity passed them by in 1896, and the city formed the Lafayette Utility system (LUS). A coalition of democrats, republicans, conservatives, and liberals, got together and called for a municipal bond that would allow the city to borrow $125 million to have LUS run fiber to every home.
They knew that they would not be able to compete with the ad dollars that would be applied by Bell South and Cox, so they formed the Fiber Film Festival, inviting citizens to create and submit their own ads urging passage of the bond. They won. Yet Bell South and Cox, ground the move to a haul with litigation, delaying the installation by a year at a cost of $125,000.
As a result of telecom lobbying ($40,000,000), 14 states have passed laws making it difficult to impossible for U.S. municipalities to do what Lafayette is doing.
Another issue, which I did not get to watch all of, was Net Neutrality. I must confess that this one has confused me. The Telecoms arguments are logical. Yet, when someone in the program mentioned that Google and YouTube would likely not happen on a network where you have to pay more for the speeds required by these services, it all started clicking. Citation Machine would be impossible. Receiving, at present, over 800,000 page views a day, I would not be able to afford the extra bandwidth that this service requires. Charging two rates for Internet service would serve to hold a status quo, crippling innovation.
Timothy Woo, a technology law professor at Columbia University, calls it extortion, charging higher rates for certain services — because they can. It gives them control, because they can. It happened in the 19th century, when Western Union charged substantially less for service to Associated Press, than other news services. The Government came in and called the wires, Common Carriage, and held that the fee should be consistent for service through the wires, through the canals, through the see ports, etc.
Well, that’s as far as I got, and now it’s time to go walk the dog. I will definitely watch the rest of this program when I get back to my office on Monday.
Technorati Tags: warlick iste net telecoms netneutrality
I think most people do not understand the issue of Net Neutrality and they don’t understand the impact that this kind of control has on the exchange of information. How can we compete with other nations when we’re holding ourselves back to make an extra buck?
If the net is to realize it’s promise as a platform for the free exchange of ideas, we’ve got to stop big business AND big government from getting a stranglehold on it. Local area co-ops like Layfayette, LA could be the answer. We’ve all got to start complaining loud and long against companies like COX Cable who use their deep pockets to tie up projects like these.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m a firm believer in Capitalism, but I’m sure as hell not going to stand by and allow myself to get screwed in the name of free enterprise either.
I’m writing up a post for my blog…I’d suggest everyone else do the same.
I think we should do more than post about this in our blogs. We should try to discuss this with other teachers and educators who may not yet understand the issue.
David, I watched the Moyers piece in total last week and couldn’t stop…
It is eye opening.
I had thought the 1996 Telecom Act was promising de-regulation for the promise of public funding. While I understood the passing of the funding to us through the Universal Service fees as “a hidden tax”, I supported the concept while being aware that the telecom companies had pulled a fast one on the public, I missed the focus on the promise of FIBER and the accompanying bandwidth that we should have expected. That the Telcoms and cable companies took the money and ran, not wiring up our communities is in keeping with a group in society that looks at the corporate bottom line and not the future. Results for the stockholders, future be damned!
I had thought that the “Internet 2” or whatever the new system would be was parallelling the construction of the “old” Internet. The Moyer’s piece, outlining the telecom industries approach to the future helps me understand the issue of Net Neutrality and how, this time, what is “promised” for the Internet might be really “compromised”.
Hi David – I work on net neutrality issues and also watched the Moyers program. I have always respected Moyers and PBS as objective voices, but in this instance, I was surprised by how little time and attention was given to differing opinions and counter viewpoints. For a more complete understanding of the issues and arguments surrounding net neutrality, I would encourage you to visit my coalition’s website at http://www.handsoff.org.
For some serious propaganda and tools for spreading awareness of the issue you really should take a look at http://www.savetheinternet.com. It has a LOT of home-grown videos (something that would be nigh impossible if the telecoms have their way) that have been created to raise awareness, as well as a fun little widget for your blog’s sidebar that can lead visitors to more information.
The reason I mention it is because one of the videos is a 12 minute micro-documentary that includes footage from Bill Moyers program. I remember that you either had a DOPA widget, or a blog post about DOPA that made me think of the Save the Internet site. It’s really a compelling issue once you realize how citizen produced media has historically been shutdown as newspapers, radio, and television has become highly commercialized.
I have a lot of respect for Moyers but he left some important points out of his show and ISTE appears to have missed them as well.
First, the telecos are building out their networks thanks to some of the regulatory relief they received over the last two years. Verizon has already connected more than 6 million homes to fiber through their FIOS service. Television can also be delivered through the service but that requires negotiating thousands of local franchise agreements which is why national franshising is such an important issue for Congress to address. The Fiber-to-the-Home Council has also pointed out that fiber connections grew 215% in the United States between spring 2005 and spring 2006.
But we’re seeing innovation in other areas. Sprint recently announced they would build out a high-speed broadband wirless service using WiMax technology (http://www.wimaxforum.org/news/press_releases/sprint_80216e). Sprint and Verizon also offer wirless broadband service using technology that operates on their cell towers. No more hotspots – just plug in your card and you can access the net on trains, cars, anywhere there is a cell signal. The Bush Administration and the FCC have also cleared some of the regulatory hurdles needed to allow experimention with broadband over powerlines (http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,114793-page,1/article.html ; http://news.com.com/Broadbands+power-line+push/2100-1034_3-5780316.html)
That’s the buildout side. The adoption side is equally as strong. Adoption of broadband at home grew twice as fast in the year prior to March 2006 – 60 million in March 2005 to 84 million in March 2006. Most home broadband users (61%) said they have more than one broadband service provider where they live – probably even more if you take into account wireless. http://www.pewtrusts.org/pdf/PIP_Broadband_0506.pdf
And despite the Moyers report, users are watching video through their connects. According to the same pew study – 94 million people, or 56% of the U.S. Internet population, watched streaming video in June http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/10-13-2005/0004167844&EDATE= How many videos? Close to 1.4 billion.
Stop for a moment and think about those numbers. We have more people connected to broadband than Korea has in total population (https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ks.html). We have more people watching streaming video than Korea has people.
On the net neutrality topic, two questions need to be asked:
(1) What are the specific problems the legislation is addressing
(2) Why is the current system insufficient to address current and future problems.
On the first question, it seems that this is legislation proposed before any real documented examples. There are hypotheticals and examples pointed ot in Canada, but so far it seems to be a theoretical discussion.
The brings us to the second question. Can anything be done now if a company would enter into some arrangement that would violate net neutrality principles. It seems that yes, the government can act. Either through anti-trust actions or through the FCC. In fact, in August 2005, the FCC adopted a policy statement entitled New Principles Preserve the Open and Interconnected Nature of Public Internet which included the principle that “consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice.” So there are two government agencies that can take action and for 61% of users, they could simply switch to another service. I’m still curious why net neutrality proponents feel these three protections are insuficient and demand stronger legislation that may have even worse unintended affects.