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[ NNSquad ] Re: CBC: Internet founder blasts ISPs for hurting national interests


Barry Gold wrote:
...
Even though Cerf is one of the major forces in the development of the modern Internet, I have to disagree with him on this. The US (and to a large extent Canada and Wester Europe) is built on an enterpreneural model, where business owners/managers get to decide what is best for their business. And subject to reasonable regulations, they are free to do so on the basis of "what works for us" rather than "what is best for the country as a whole."


Cerf compares the Internet to roadways. That is all very well, but when the US needed more roadways, the Federal and state governments allocated tax dollars (or borrowed money) for that purpose. They didn't tell private businesses, "you have to run your business for _our_ benefit." That just isn't the job of business. And the 5th amendment agrees: "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

If the government wants the Internet built out to _its_ preferences, it should pay for it. Either build the infrastructure itself and sell it to other businesses (or just give it away to consumers), or pay a fair price to ISPs and backbone providers for running their business the government's way instead of their own way.
I personally think Vint Cerf's idea is the a practical compromise and a good idea, though it will be a tough sell. And I also agree with you, to some extent, about the government building it itself if it thinks it should.

Specifically, places like Kutztown, PA and (much later) major cities in Utah decided that the "last mile" should be a municipal utility. You can then rent out that pipe to the consumer's house to telcos, TV companies, ISPs, etc. Now, one can argue specifics, but that seems to be a nice model. It does require that the local or state government spend $$ on this, though (but in theory they recoup that through revenues renting the "pipe"). For instance, I believe Kutztown decided not to rent to a TV company, but to run their own "cable" station over their fiber. One could argue they shouldn't be in that business. But that's arguing details; not the general concept.

However, the cable and telco duopoly has strongly fought this. They do *not* want this and have essentially blocked any future municipalities from going this route as far as I know.

This is why I believe Vint's plan is the best compromise. It essentially breaks the local cable or telco into two pieces, one of which is responsible for the "last mile" -- aka "distribution" in the electricity businenss. And thus, this makes the best analogy so far. But not, I admit, a great one. Here in Pennsylvania, as part of the similar "split" that was forced, the incumbent power companies were given huge allotments for their "sunk costs" of developing inefficient power plants. At this point, near Philadelphia, the local power company now has lower rates that most all the competing sources availalble. So much for the deregulation. But perhaps we can learn from that and do the Internet "split" a bit better.

Just one note: I think we have all seen how well the government model worked on the roads. While long rural highways are generally pretty uncongested, the highways are at near full stop at peak periods in nearly every major city in the US, Canada, Europe... By contrast, the (privately funded & built) Internet is doing a moderately good job of keeping up with demand. Not perfect, things slow down a little at peak periods, and I can remember times in the late 90s when download times became intolerable from about 10AM-3PM every day.
I don't think I need to say much to knock down this analogy. I don't think any government nor any private company could prevent the rush hour clogging of roads in major cities. It's just laws of physics and economics. Probably the one thing that might clear the jams is continued high oil prices. Take Philadelphia. Not counting native Americans, people have been living there for around 300 years. It's all built up. Roads for walking and horses came first. Then railroads. Then more building spurred by the railroads. Then the automobile spurred more building. By the time it was figured out that we needed to invent and build expressways, there wasn't much space left to put them. The major artery in Philadelphia, route 76 (the Schuylkill Expressway) is sandwiched between the Schuylkill River and (alternately) railroad tracks and rock walls. In some places, such as Center City where the road runs along the river and past the Pennsylvania RR station, they've already put it at a lower level than the street level, which now runs on *top* of it. Good luck with getting a California style 8 lane highway in there. It's four lanes at best and not going to change.

I'm not a big fan of government at all. The least government is best. But, when you're dealing with a limited resource (such as the last mile to the home) that is critical to the economy, government involvement of some form is unavoidable, no matter how much I hate introducing government into the picture.

Cerf said large internet service providers (ISPs) need to be split into two entities — one wholesale arm that sells access to the company's network to other firms, and one retail arm that sells internet access to customers. The wholesale arm would have to sell access to other service providers at the same rate that it charges itself.

Sounds like a good idea, except... that didn't work too well with the phone companies in the 80s.
You might want to look at studies of the cost of long distance telephone calls in the US. People used to time their LD calls within the US before the breakup. They were artificially high. It was more expensive than "overtime" cell calls are today. In contrast, now, I have unlimited LD plus 3Mbps Internet plus VoIP for under $50/month from a 3rd party telco/ISP reselling (while they profitably can) Verizon DSL.

As for Rogers, anybody who won't learn from past mistakes will get pretty much what they deserve. It was stupid the first time, and they got slapped down. What is this, pure masochism? Hey, that hurt the first time, so I'll just stick my other cheek out to get slapped?