The network neutrality debate between the telecom industry and everyone else is still going strong. The “neutralist” side has been waging a valiant but generally ineffective campaign to enact legislation that would prevent the likes of AT&T from fracturing the Internet into “ours and theirs.”
In an interview with BusinessWeek, Ed Whitacre, CEO of AT&T, said this of Google, Vonage, and other providers of services on the Internet: “[W]hat they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain’t going to let them do that…” He means that AT&T has invested all this money connecting homes to the Internet and Google gets to use those connections for free.
Whitacre is either lying or ignorant. AT&T obviously charges customers for broadband Internet access. The $45 a month (or more) that their customers pay monthly eventually pays for the cost of laying cable to the premises. In the case of most homes and businesses, the customer has already paid for the cost of the cable because they’ve been using it for phone service. In the case of cable Internet providers, they’ve been paying for cable TV.
AT&T’s only costs are for DSLAMs and other equipment that lets them use their existing cables for multiple purposes—all of which is inexpensive compared to the cost of laying cable (which is paid for by phone service anyway). AT&T’s case is already looking weak.
The idea that AT&T wants to charge sites like Google for what their customers do is bad enough, but AT&T would punish the sites and services that didn’t pay. AT&T would slow them down. On its face, this might not seem like the end of the world. AT&T argues that if a customer is unhappy that they’re slowing down their favorite sites, they can always switch to another ISP. But not everyone has a choice for broadband Internet service.
In the United States, big telecom companies have spent over $150 million lobbying politicians to allow them to have local monopolies. Chances are, no matter where you live, there is exactly one phone provider and exactly one cable provider. Big telecom has made it as difficult as possible for competition to exist in local markets. In some cases, it’s even illegal to try to compete with them. So for many people, there’s only one DSL and one cable provider, and a lot of people can only get one or the other. It’s a cushy setup for big telecom, and it’s also the reason why their “competition” argument is pure bunk. They’ve done everying they can to squash competition, and now they’re saying that competition will keep them honest.
Beyond all of that, however, looms the invisible elephant in the room. Big telecom doesn’t want anyone to know it’s there and most neutralists don’t know it’s there. But it’s still the biggest thing in the room: Even if you’re not an AT&T customer, you might still use their network to access some sites and services.
AT&T is what’s called a Tier-1 carrier. They own and operate a vast network of fiber optic cables that span the United States and other parts of the world. They connect their network to the similarly vast networks of other Tier-1 carriers, thus forming the backbone of the Internet through which nearly all Internet traffic passes. When you type “www.google.com” into your browser, you might pass through two or three different Tier-1 carriers’ networks before getting to Google even if you’re not their customer. The Internet is designed so you’d never even know it; it all happens automagically in the background.
Not every site you load will go through AT&T’s network. Maybe the path from your provider to Google doesn’t touch AT&T, but maybe the path to Amazon or Vonage does. If AT&T decides to artificially slow down Google (or Amazon or Vonage) access through their network, non-AT&T customers will be affected.
And this is why network neutrality is so important to the vitality of the Internet. Because an end user’s request might travel through AT&T’s network even though they’re not a direct AT&T customer, any decision AT&T makes to inhibit traffic to certain sites and services will affect people who are unaware their data is automatically being routed through AT&T’s network.
What Ed Whitacre is proposing amounts to digital-age extortion. It’s the Internet equivalent of a mobster walking into a local restaurant and saying, “Nice place. It would be a shame if something were to happen to it.” And because these sites and services are probably already paying AT&T for their own Internet access, it’s as if the mobster is also the landlord.
Like most everything in the world, all of this boils down to greed. Big telecom wants to improve its bottom line without doing any more work. Charging customers twice for the same thing is easy enough and unless a law is enacted preventing this sort of behavior—which can only be done through the politicians to whom the industry has contributed millions—nothing is to stop these companies from doing it.
If you’re in favor of preventing telecom companies from using this kind of behavior, please go to SaveTheInternet.com and sign the petition. Be sure to also send a message to your representatives in the House and Senate, which is made dead simple by the provided form. As regular citizens, it’s the best we can do to keep companies like AT&T from ruining the party.
