Description: When AT&T’s Ed Whitacre declared in 2005, “They’re not going to use my pipes for free,” he was talking very specifically about search engine marketers. Telcos and cablecos want to use their control of the Internet connection to provide so-called fast-lane service to business partners. The strong implication is that non-partners will suffer degraded service. Worse, even those who do partner with one or more Internet access providers will incur (5) extra charges, (4) reduced reach, (3) degraded knowledge of their customers’ behaviors, (2) reduced ability to discover new applications and markets, and (1) reduced trust. A series of very recent FCC and court decisions mean that the neutral Internet we know and love, which gave birth to the entire field of search engine marketing and nurtured it to profitability, can no longer be taken for granted.
David wrote a book called Rise of the Stupid Network and I make a mental note to read it just ’cause it’s a great title. David is a self-described “internet guy,”has twelve years of experience in the telephone company, and is a “prosultant.” As opposed to a “con”sultant, I imagine. He opens his talk by describing the network neutrality debate as being renewed in recent online discussions and that the movement has recently picked up speed. He says there are five reasons we need to join this discussion and they are:
1. We will get charged extra
2. Our reach will be reduced
3. We won’t know our customers’ behaviors as well.
4. Our ability to discover and reach new markets will be reduced
5. Reduced trust
Everything with this net neutrality really hit the fan in 2005 when Ed Whitaker, the CEO of AT&T declared that the internet could not use his pipes for free. Basically, he declared war on Google, Yahoo, Vonage, etc. and he declared on it behalf of the phone companies and Time Warner Cable. Whitaker didn’t have the vision to invent it but he wanted it in 2005 because it was a huge success. In general, the telephone company believes their job is to treat internet traffic differently and get into the middle of the online world. We would need permission and special fees to reach people reliably.
The problem with Whitaker’s statement is that the internet is already reliable; it’s the telephone connections that are not. The internet works on any application & a variety of machines. No one plans on the growth of the internet, no one knows how big it is, yet it keeps growing.
The reason David calls it the “stupid network” is because there is no center of the internet. Everything is on the edges. No one runs it or regulates it, anyone can put things online and launch new applications. The telephone company wants us to believe that the internet will collapse and they are the ones that can save us. They truly believe that. But the telephone companies are the ones that are collapsing, not the internet; the internet continues to get better and better. The true value of the internet is at is edges and we are all at the edges (like he said, there’s no center).
If the internet loses its laissez-faire attitude that has fostered a spirit of creativity and freedom, we will lose the true value of the net. Net neutrality is actually defined as the equal treatments of packages regardless of its location, source, or ownership. The telephone company wants to take a chunk out of everything we get from the internet so they can make a profit. The want to transform the net into an application-aware and cultural discriminating atmosphere and turn it against certain applications.
