Net Neutrality keeps Internet open

Net Neutrality keeps Internet Open and benefits Healthcare, as well as commerce, banking, employment, education, and national security.

The fact that Net Neutrality keeps the Internet open is really about healthcare, believe me. It’s also about free speech, commerce, competition, education, employment, and national security, so read on.

FCC Conservatives have long wanted to gut Net Neutrality consumer protections, likely killing open Internet competition as a result. That’s not surprising, but there are many issues not well understood or debated.

I was so bothered by this that I sent personal notes to the five FCC Commissioners, shared my Net Neutrality perspectives, and urged them NOT to gut Net Neutrality.

NET NEUTRALITY DEFINED

Broadly, Net Neutrality requires Internet service providers to enable access to all legal content and applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking particular products or websites.

Net Neutrality is NOT about treating high-bandwidth apps (online gaming & video streaming) the same as low-bandwidth apps (sensor monitoring and email traffic), because that makes perfect sense. A life-saving medical alert, for example only consumes about 100 characters, but streaming a $2 movie rental consumes dozens of gigabytes. No, Net is about protecting consumers and fair competition by treating similar traffic the same (Yahoo! search results & videos versus Google results and YouTube).

THE THREE MOST IMPORTANT NET NEUTRALITY ISSUES, with details following:

  1. Net Neutrality Enables The Internet Economy.
  2. Net Neutrality Facilitates Competition among Apps, Services, Content, and Devices.
  3. Net Neutrality Protects Free Speech.

#1 – NET NEUTRALITY ENABLES THE INTERNET ECONOMY. High-speed, always-on Internet access has become so central to eCommerce, eBanking, Telehealth, Telework, Distance Learning, and National Security that it should be highly regulated as Strategic Public Infrastructure, not controlled by a few grateful oligarchs with monopoly power and little regulatory oversight. But how big is the Internet Economy? McKinsey made a bold attempt to measure the Internet economy in 2011, defining it as the “private consumption (electronic equipment, e-commerce, broadband subscriptions, mobile Internet, and hardware and software consumption); private investment (from the telecommunications industry and the maintenance of extranet, intranet, and Web sites); public expenditure (spending and buying by government in software hardware and services); and trade (which accounts for exports of Internet equipment plus business-to-business services with overseas companies).” McKinsey estimated the global Internet Economy to be $8 trillion/year, but that’s just the Internet itself. “The Internet’s contribution to our lives is nearly impossible to measure,” and that includes the many industries that rely on the Internet.

#2 – NET NEUTRALITY FACILITATES COMPETITION AMONG APPS, SERVICES, CONTENT, AND DEVICES. Network operators should not be allowed to determine what apps, services and content you can use, or what companies’ devices can be connected to the network. In many ways, across many industries, our nation’s ability to compete on the world stage depends on our tech innovation and ability to develop forward-looking online apps and services, but that presents a Chicken-v-Egg dilemma. That development work often depends on having access to the high-speed networks they will eventually depend on. If startup companies can’t get this access, they can’t even begin development and testing. Creating that competitive development environment is an important role of government, so much so that broadband carriers must be prevented from leveraging monopoly positions in network operations to gain competitive advantages in apps, services and content, including streaming video and music services. While these companies must be allowed to choose what business they are in, that should be either in highly-regulated network operations, or unregulated apps and content, but not both.

#3 – NET NEUTRALITY PROTECTS FREE SPEECH. Without Net Neutrality protections, broadband providers can use deep packet inspection, throttling, and filtering to determine winners and losers, what news and facts we see, and what voice we have in protest. This danger, combined with an earlier FCC ruling that allows media companies to gain monopoly control of all media (TV, radio and print) in any city, poses a severe threat to truth and our democracy.

OTHER REASONS NET NEUTRALITY IS IMPORTANT:

ISSUE #4 – DEMOCRACY. Our national heritage and democracy is under attack when a small number of unelected officials, appointed by an authoritarian President, are allowed to control the networks that govern our economy for political purposes while strengthening the monopoly power of multinational corporations and the oligarchs who run them.

Image of a Monopoly board presenting BIG Broadband as Public Infrastructure or Private Monopoly

ISSUE #5 – BIG BROADBAND. In BIG Broadband: Public Infrastructure or Private Monopolies,” a white paper written for consumer advocates and policymakers, I contrast the different incentives of incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs), cable television (CATV) companies, municipalities and other stakeholders. The paper suggests that the capital expense of extending fiber closer to premises is high enough to cause the ILECs to cherry pick the most profitable customers in green field installations, leaving others to fend for themselves. That’s where public broadband comes in.

ISSUE #6 – FIBER-OPTICS. BIG Broadband and Gigabit to the Home is a 2006 presentation that offer examples of high-bandwidth apps that can’t even be considered without much faster networks already in place. I developed the slides to promote gigabit networks when other network visionaries were still calling for a national broadband strategy of just 100 Mbps. Anyone who ever took Queuing Theory in college remembers the “turnpike effect,” where billions are spent on new highway infrastructure, but as soon as the highway opens it is already congested.

ISSUE #7 – HEALTHCARE. As founding editor of Modern Health Talk, I write about healthcare policy and the role of technologies like telehealth in defining a preferred healthcare future that’s driven by Moore’s Law and the exponentially accelerating pace of tech innovation. In that capacity I responded to an FCC call for comments about their Broadband Health Imperative. (My submitted comments are highlighted.)

MY PERSPECTIVE – As a retired IBM technologist, digital home consultant, and consumer advocate, I once served on the FCC Consumer Advisory Committee and participated in three working groups there: Advanced Technologies, Homeland Security, and Rural & Underserved Communities. I traveled from Austin to D.C. several times a year on my own dime for this unpaid position and was subjected to intense scrutiny to be sure there were no conflicts of interest. I was forced to resign that volunteer FCC position when I later decided to give up my consulting job for a market strategy position at Dell. While at IBM in the early 1990s, I responded to an RFP by the City of Austin for citywide fiber, but AT&T got a state law passed to prevent public ownership of fiber. We lost that battle but won the next one years later when AT&T tried to extend their public fiber ban to include Wi-Fi too. They wanted to prevent municipalities from offering free wireless networks, but a small grass roots movement that I worked with gained enough public attention to defeat their legislation proposal.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wayne Caswell is a retired IBM technologist, futurist, market strategist, consumer advocate, sleep economist, and founding editor of Modern Health Talk. With international leadership experience developing wireless networks, sensors, and smart home technologies, he’s advocated for Big Broadband and fiber-to-the-home while also enjoying success lobbying for consumers. He considers himself independent, but leans left to support progressive policies. (contact & BIO)

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  1. RELATED ARTICLES:

    Why We Must Protect Net Neutrality (Robert Reich video offers his arguments.)

    The Monopolization of America (11 min YouTube) Robert Reich video takes an in-depth look at antitrust laws in the United States and explains how corporate giants have come to dominate the American economy and politics.

    Why We Need Net Neutrality Legislation, and What It Should Look Like (5/7/2018, Information Technology & Innovation Foundation) I often do not agree with ITIF, a right-leaning conservative think tank, but this proposal seems to make sense and have promise.

    FCC votes to repeal net neutrality, raising implications for telehealth and remote monitoring (FierceHealthcare)

    Net Neutrality Repeal Raises Questions for Home Health Tech

    When The FCC Kills Net Neutrality, Here’s What Your Internet Could Look Like (Forbes)

    FCC net neutrality process ‘corrupted’ by fake comments and vanishing consumer complaints, officials say (Washington Post)

    2:45min Facebook video (by The Future is Now) is easy to watch

    Big Tech to Join Legal Fight Against Net Neutrality Repeal (NYTimes)

    Lawmakers Want to Know Why Ajit Pai Made Up DDOS Attack, Lied to Congress (Moterboard Vice) Chairman apparently lied several times about a Distributed Denial of Service attack causing the FCC website to crash, when in reality it was overwhelmed by public outcry against plans to gut Net Neutrality protections.

    Why Net Neutrality Matters Even in the Age of Oligopoly (Wired) Here’s my summary:

    The 2015 Open Internet Order, among other things:
    * Reclassifies broadband (wireless or not) as a telecommunications service under Title II of the Communications Act. Broadband was previously under Title I as an information service. Title II makes broadband subject to stricter ‘common carrier’ regulation. Title II is important because it states that common carriers cannot “make any unjust or unreasonable discrimination in charges, practices, classifications, regulations, facilities, or services.” This translates to net neutrality for many folks.
    * Bans blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization.
    * Creates a general conduct standard that ISPs cannot harm consumers and gives the FCC the authority to address questionable practices, or investigate ISPs.

    Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced his intent:
    In May of this year, Chairman Pai proposed a rulemaking to reexamine the 2015 regulatory framework and embrace a “light touch” approach. More specifically, among other things, the order proposes to:
    1. Make broadband a Title I service once again.
    2. Eliminate the general conduct standard.
    3. Seek comment on the blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization rules.
    In November of this year, Chairman Pai announced his proposal that is scheduled for a vote on December 14th. The proposal would roll back almost all of the 2015 Open Internet Order except the disclosure requirement. I.e., if Verizon wants to block content you see, they just have to let you know that can happen in their terms of service. A good article on the new proposal: https://www.wired.com/story/fcc-wants-to-kill-net-neutrality-congress-will-pay-the-price/

    Republicans/Chairman Pai/ISP reasoning:
    * Title II regulation has hurt investment in broadband networks. Since the 2015 rules were passed, there has been a slight dip in investment.
    MY RESPONSE: Capitalism encourages innovation and investment risk-taking, as long as there’s a level playing field. But market forces don’t work among oligopolies with monopoly power. Network operators simply don’t invest when they don’t have to, i.e. without competition. AT&T and Time Warner, for example, both announced plans to offer to gigabit services in Austin the day after Google announced its only gigabit plans. That would not have happened without Google’s competitive push. Google strategy folks told Wayne they never planned to profit from broadband but simply needed to light a fire under competitors so future broadband apps, content and services could be added.
    * Less investment means less broadband for low-income, rural, and urban neighborhoods.
    MY RESPONSE: There exist some programs to assist with rural broadband development such as the Federal Universal Service Charge. That fee is already paid to network operators to encourage expansion into low-income, rural and urban neighborhoods.
    * Network management is necessary because some bandwidth hogs may adversely affect other services.
    MY RESPONSE: Title II does NOT prevent giving high priority to high-value content like a life-saving alert from a medical sensor that only needs to send a few dozen characters, and lower priority to relatively low-value content like a streamed movie with many gigabytes of content. What it does prevent is giving one’s own video content priority over that of a competitor.

    Koch brothers are cities’ new obstacle for building broadband (WIRED) Here’s how I commented”

    The Koch brothers, standing with the big telecom companies, are also behind the FCC’s recent repeal of Net Neutrality protections and laws prohibiting public fiber networks. But that not only goes against our national best interest; it also goes against their own wealth-building, so it makes no sense. Don’t they know that super-fast Internet access accelerates commerce and enables new markets, while the lack of broadband competition results in slow access and stifles innovation and economic growth?

    South Korea is a great example because it leads the world in broadband deployment, speed and affordability, even though the Internet was developed by DARPA in the U.S.. Their government made a strategic decision early on to promote broadband as a way to lift their economy after the Korean War, and the results speak for themselves.

    Just imagine if Congress invested strategically like S.Korea did, with a $1.5 trillion bill to improve education, healthcare, research, and infrastructure, including public broadband, rather than a $1.5 trillion tax cut bill for the Koch brothers and other wealthy donors. Talk about creating jobs and promoting growth!

    I no longer work in broadband but wrote a paper over 10 years ago that you should still find interesting. Google “BIG Broadband: Public Infrastructure or Private Monopolies”, because it’s directly relevant to this article and was written for policy makers.

    The Suburbs That Haven’t Recovered From the Recession (The Atlantic) I commented…

    This is all about modern infrastructure, or lack of it. Just think of why towns grew up in these locations in the first place. People were attracted by natural resources (water, lumber, rich soil, coal, gold), human resources (universities producing skilled & educated workers), transportation (trains, highways, sea or air ports), electric power, and in some cases shear beauty.

    As the Agricultural Age gave way to the Industrial Age, the “success factors” changed, and changed again with the Information Age. Traditional jobs have been disappearing entirely with globalization and automation, and high-speed access to the Internet has now become critical to future success in this new Age. But telecom companies have been slow to deploy the necessary broadband fiber networks to rural communities to support online business alternatives.

    Even worse is that Texas and many other states passed laws years ago banning municipalities from installing their own public networks. That’s thanks to intense lobbying from the telecom industry that doesn’t want to compete against a government that can tax and regulate them. Model legislation crafted by AT&T in Texas was promoted to other states through ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council) and sadly has become widespread. The Trump FCC seems unwilling to challenge the telecom monopolies and establish a national broadband policy that sees the Internet as strategic infrastrure.

    I spoke and wrote about this in the early 2000s after retiring from IBM and working as a broadband and digital home consultant. An especially important white paper is still available on Slideshare. If interested, contact me or just Google “BIG Broadband: Public Infrastructure or Private Monopolies.”

    99.7 Percent of Unique FCC Comments Favored Net Neutrality — A new report from Stanford University shows that most commenters were knowledgeable about the issue and very much in favor of keeping the protections.

    Access to high-speed internet in America is leading to a digital divide (4-min TODAY show video, 1/20/19) “There is a digital divide happening America concerning access to high-speed internet. With many service providers looking to offer 5G connectivity, it could leave others behind. NBC’s Dasha Burns explains in this week’s Sunday Spotlight.”

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