So much as come and gone since the Last Big Net Neutrality Moment. An extra-long 4th-of-July weekend. The Taepodong-2. A formidable head-butt. It's enough to make a tech policy geek forget the allowed analogies when explaining how the inner workings of the Internet operate.
Thank goodness for Drew Clark at the National Journal. He's provided the perfect supplement to prevent Net Neutrality amnesia -- and without the chalky aftertaste. It comes in the form of a near-4000 word review of this issue, its history and the key players in this week's NJ magazine (sub required). Lots of ink has been spilled on this issue. Not so much of it has captured the NN entirety as well as Clark's piece.
Clark has some excerpts up on his own Web site and teases that the NJ may make the story free at some point. Until then -- and after the jump -- here's our own sampling....
Over the weekend of October 29-30, Business Week published an interview with (AT&T's Ed) Whitacre on its Web site. In the interview, which had taken place back in September, Whitacre displayed his usual aggressive style. Asked about Google, Microsoft, and Vonage -- all big Internet companies that use broadband to transmit video, software, and telephone calls -- Whitacre said, "They don't have any fiber out there. They don't have any wires. They don't have anything. They use my lines for free -- and that's bull. For a Google or a Yahoo! or a Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes for free is nuts!" ...
Oh, yes, now, we remember that moment well, Drew. As we noted with the anticipation of a child on Christmas Eve in our "Don't Bogart My Pipes" post:
So, three cheers to Whitacre for so eloquently kicking the previously esoteric "Net Neutrality" debate into the sphere of the interesting And, indeed, hyperbole or not, it will only get more interesting as battle lines are drawn and the fight is played out.
Wow. We were right for once! Back to the National Journal....
...in one fell swoop, the Whitacre interview caused Microsoft and Google to rally the opposition to the Bells.
Then, for context, Clark takes a step back in time -- something extremely rare for NN commentators -- all the way back to the early years of this decade. Come along...
...As dial-up became broadband transmission over cable's co-axial wires, the technology companies grew wary of the cable industry...
...For the Silicon Valley techies -- worried about the threat that cable posed to neutrality rules -- cable's rival, the Bells, were an obvious ally....
...With Microsoft, Intel, and Cisco on board, the broadband coalition drafted a set of four "connectivity principles" that should govern conduct by all broadband carriers -- cable and Bell. The principles said that consumers should be able to access any legal Web site, use any type of software, and attach any electronic device so long as it didn't harm the broadband network, and that they should be able to obtain accurate information about their conditions of service....
SBC, Verizon, and the other two Bell companies, BellSouth and Qwest, signed on to the four principles in September 2003. Their thinking was that a superfast fiber network would have unlimited Internet bandwidth and no reason to discriminate among Web sites. There would be plenty of room for video, for telephone calls, and for other new digital services....
...(in 2003), the FCC's Powell put the spotlight on the neutrality principles, calling them the four "Internet freedoms." He challenged cable companies to abide by them, too, and they eventually agreed....
Then back to the Whitacre comment:
The technology companies had fought for the Bells in the war of attrition against competitive rivals. They also sided with telecom over cable on offering video. That's why Silicon Valley felt so betrayed by Whitacre's remarks to Business Week.... Whitacre's comments... transformed the debate. "But for those statements," said a top technology lobbyist, "this debate would never have reached the fever pitch it has now."
Clark then touches on the nuances in opinion felt by Silicon Valley on the issue and separates the camps thusly...
Silicon Valley companies have mixed feelings about that argument. Think of the Internet as a layer cake, with communications wires on the bottom, computer processors and software in the middle, and Web sites on the top.
The bottom layer...
...(tried) to get the tech industry to coalesce around a set of self-regulatory principles on net neutrality.
Whereas, the top layer...
... particularly Amazon, eBay, and Yahoo -- have disdained the Bells as monopolists with a history of innovation-stifling behavior. They have no interest in compromise.
The story then gets deeper into the partisan politics impacting the debate, the more recent lobbying/grass-roots efforts and then makes subtle prediction for the future of the issue.
Try to read the whole thing (you can get a day pass to the National Journal). We've already taped an emergency copy to our ankle in case our mind starts wandering away from this All Important issue again.
Minor typo at the beginning of the article, just fyi. "So much as come and gone" I assume should be so much HAS come and gone. Nice article, though!
Posted by: AllyM | December 02, 2009 at 01:25 PM