The two companies say federal regulators should be able to enforce such traffic rules on the Internet, but want to bar regulation of wireless networks and "additional differentiated online services."
No one knows exactly what that means, but most industry observers agree it is the first step toward a tiered pricing system that will make faster, higher speed Internet service available to users and content providers willing to pay for it.
Does the Google-Verizon pact signal "the cable-ization of the Internet," as some consumer advocates warn? Would the creation of a premium fast-lane for well-capitalized content providers put start-ups and other Web small fry at a competitive disadvantage?
No one knows for sure what the future of digital communication will bring. But the public has too much at stake to let the Web's largest commercial interests write the traffic laws that will govern the Internet unilaterally.
Directing traffic on the Internet
Net neutrality -- the principle that all information transmitted over the Internet should share the same digital highway and obey the same traffic laws -- is a term invoked by so many people with so many different stakes in the future of digital communication that it has become nearly meaningless.
So the news that two of the industry's biggest players, Google and Verizon, have reached a tentative pact they contend will advance that amorphous cause is interesting chiefly because so many of Internet stakeholders were excluded from the negotiations.
It is as if one large insurance company and one big HMO struck a deal to restructure the way health care is delivered and assumed that everyone else involved -- doctors, patients, government regulators and rivals in the health care industry -- would fall in line.
But that's hardly the way health care reform came to fruition. And there is no reason to believe a gentleman's agreement between Google and Verizon will protect the public interest in this instance.
One need not embrace the cynical view that Google and Verizon are interested in protecting only their selfish commercial prerogatives to understand that they should not be charting something as important as the future of the Internet without the input of a whole lot of others, including smaller content providers and consumers.
In a democratic society, it is the government's job to protect the public's interest in the management of public resources, which is precisely what the broadband spectrum is. Google and Verizon's effort to write the rules themselves only underlines the need for the Federal Communications Commission to assert its regulatory authority.
Internet service providers such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon have resisted federal regulation on the grounds that they know better than the government does how to provide Internet service most efficiently to the largest number of customers. All these carriers pay lip service to the ideal of an open Internet in which all information competes on a level playing field, but all are looking for are looking to establish a fast lane that can provide express service to customers willing to pay for it.
The tentative agreement between Google and Verizon would keep what the two companies call the "public Internet" free of such distinctions but reserve the their right to develop an alternative system -- a sort of wireless information autobahn -- that would allow Google and other content providers companies willing to pay a premium to expedite the delivery of their own content.
The federal government's ability to influence such agreements was limited by a federal appeals court ruling in April. The ruling, from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the federal circuit, was a major victory for Comcast, which had challenged the commission's authority to enforce the net neutrality many consumers groups say is necessary to keep large content providers from dominating the Internet.
Legislation to clarify the FCC's jurisdiction over broadband need not preclude agreements like the one between Google and Verizon. But it would give federal regulators the authority to assure that such deals are consistent with the public interest in an open Internet. Julius Genachowski, the FCC's current chairman, notes that the United States now lags other industrialized countries in Internet access and must act more aggressively to expand such access.
The broadband spectrum is a public resource, and its management should not be dominated by a few, big for-profit companies. Expanding the FCC's authority to preserve an open Internet will enhance consumers' power to control what information and services they receive over their landline and wireless Internet networks.
Subscribe in a reader
No comments:
Post a Comment