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Re-arranging The Deck-chairs
From: David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>
Date: Tue, 18 Oct 1994 11:13:42 -0400
Date: Mon, 17 Oct 1994 21:42:05 -0400 From: John Murray <jxm () engin umich edu> To: farber () central cis upenn edu Subject: Re-arranging The Deck-chairs REARRANGING THE DECK-CHAIRS --------------------------- John Murray University of Michigan (C) Copyright 1994, John Murray On September 30th, a symposium was held at the University of Michigan entitled "Competition and the Information Superhighway". It was sponsored by the Michigan Telecomminications & Technology Law Review, and was focused on the legal, business, and regulatory issues associated with the NII. Among the speakers were formal representatives of interested parties like AT&T, Bell Atlantic, Ameritech, and the FCC. One member of the audience characterized the apparent NII policies of these organizations as "rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic" - a desire by super- large bureaucracies to stay afloat by bringing privately-owned, centralized management and control to a hopelessly distributed and anarchic network. This perception seemed to be widely shared among the attendees, including this writer. There was an obsession with the supposed need to find source material to take advantage of "all this bandwidth". However, it wasn't clear to me how this obsession was linked to the expressed desire not to "squander these gifts provided by the scientists and engineers"! Several speakers sought to justify covering the basic infrastructure costs by vertical integration of source and distribution - "acquisition of content or rights to content" as one telecom representative put it. None of the platform speakers seemed able to consider alternative models - one involving a simple common carrier system between consumers and small businesses, for example. Thus, the "initial entry product" (the inevitable video-on-demand, of course) was always assumed to come from some vast Blockbuster-style video-base, rather than from numerous specialized providers and independent niche market servers. When asked if he was describing "the follow-on to the Internet", the Bell Atlantic speaker side-stepped the question by discussing router capacities and broadband satellite networks rather than address the content issue. Similarly, another audience comment about high bandwidth community-wide networks linked by nationwide backbones drew disparaging responses about Internet jocks and arcane user interfaces. In a side discussion, a telecom policy consultant and former FCC official seemed unable to understand how low-cost the existing Internet really is. There's an all-pervasive impression that current low-cost or free Net access is being subsidized by literally billions of dollars of support from industrial and research entities. While the financial support certainly exists, net Net running costs are not nearly as high as such individuals imagine. It was disappointing that those charged with representing the public interest - namely, the FCC - seemed so little interested in under- standing if and how the public interest is currently being served by the existing Internet. There seems to be no-one asking the real NII decision-makers the awkward questions on behalf of Joe & Jane Public. It was recently pointed out to me that community access TV became possible precisely because municipalities had leverage on cable companies - public access channels were part of the payoff for the right to run cables on city streets. With the Infobahn, who else can play that public interest role except the FCC? Legal topics were discussed of course, and inevitably the issues of copyrights and royalties were considered. The necessity for input from lawyers on corporate strategy and organizational structures was also mentioned. However, two law-related phrases used by corporate representatives stick uncomfortably in my mind - how to go about "the identification of new legal opportunities" and the need to "protect our own first amendment right to freedom of speech over our own network". Luckily, there were some encouraging signs amid all this suit-speak. A venture capital investor from Silicon Valley calmly announced that "the evolution of the superhighway isn't going to come from any of the big companies heard from today". Instead, he predicted that numerous small companies and start-ups will provide what's needed. Some amount of government involvement will be required, mostly to prod the Internet into what's needed - perhaps this may be a type of "teaser" for what can be done on the bigger network where the "real" commerce takes place. And the founder of PageNet described how his company had evolved from a start-up in 1981 to the largest paging company in America. It was refreshing to hear of a business which had grown simply by providing a communication link, without needing to "acquire content" so that it could then exert its own right to free speech. Speaking as a supposed "internet jock", I found the symposium quite interesting but also rather disheartening. It made me reallize how wide the "gulf" is between "us" and "the suits", and how much work still needs to be done to demonstrate that the video-on-demand model is not the only option. It was unfortunate that no-one here at the University of Michigan was in a position to set up a few Mosaic demonstrations in the hallways for the symposium participants. Little things like that CAN make a difference!!
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- Re-arranging The Deck-chairs David Farber (Oct 18)