The National Broadband Plan

One of the things I think we all need to understand as these…[conferences]...go forward is that whatever one likes or dislikes about the present nature the network and its extent, it is important to remember that, funding sources and the employers of some key actors aside, the design itself is not a consequence of any formal governmental or intergovernmental initiative.

-John Klensin in an address to the Internet Governance Forum, 2007

At the risk of over simplifying the whole of the political sciences, I think it is fair to say that government is a double-edged sword.  A government can perform tasks and complete projects that are necessary or good but would not be accomplished if left to the will of a capitalist market.  Every single time government engages itself to do something for the people or nation it serves there is a debate as to whether that something is a.) worth doing at all and b.) something a non-government entity could accomplish on its own.  AS a country we have historically decided that the military ought to be controlled and administered by the government and elected officials.  We have decided that police forces ought not to be contracted out to private institutions and we have given the federal and state governments a great deal of latitude when it comes to the implementation of public transportation, highways, waste collection, energy distribution, eduction, and a myriad other aspects of our modern society.  The long and heated debate about Health Care Reform (when it was rarely actually about Health Care Reform) boiled down to whether or not we think the government can improve our national health by regulating insurance companies and providing incentives to cover the currently uninsured--insured persons being less costly in the long term.  The argument against doing so would be that the insurance companies are doing just fine thank you and that giving the government more powers is something Republicans don't like to do while Democrats are in charge.  The argument for passing reforms is pretty simple: Illness and injury do not respond or correlate in any way to market forces and as a result, the market does not react to them appropriately.  A government regulated health care system would result in a less financial and class biased and less costly system.  It also means smaller profits for insurance companies and more potential abuses of power in government.  The choice lies between a more compassionate nation--and the vulnerabilities inherent to that compassion--or a purely capitalist nation where the vulnerabilities are passed directly to the consumer citizenry. 

The debate over the National Broadband Plan will be exactly the same except without all the vitriol, utter misrepresentations, fear mongering, and class warfare.   Okay, there will probably be some utter misrepresentations and perhaps a small amount of vitriol.  But the kind of people who make these debates so painful to our national discourse--the major media outlets, the strategists, and the politicians up for re-election--aren't likely to be paying any attention to the plan the FCC commissioned one year ago and released last week.  They probably won't even read it, let alone understand it.  And that's probably a good thing, as it might result in a saner debate of the issues.  I have read it (all 340 pages, not counting the appendices and such) and just like the Health Care bill, it can cut both ways and there are things about it that I don't like or are at least a cause for concern as to how it gets implemented.  Unlike the Health Care reform bill, however, Congress does not need to pass any law to allow this plan to materialize over the next two decades.  All congress need do is appropriate funding and expand the purview of the FCC slightly by amending an existing law or two.  And I hope that they do.  Overall, this is a good plan.  As good a plan as any government anywhere is likely to have, given that the very fact that it comes from the government hurts it significantly.  

The internet has been, somewhat ironically, nearly government free since its inception.  With the exception of pornography laws and their complicity with ISPs to read our emails and track our purchases (Thanks, Patriot Act!) the government in this country has done surprisingly little legislating on the internet.  Part of this is because enforcing internet laws would be incredibly difficult.  Part of this is because there are huge First Amendment fights lurking around every corner.   Part of this is because the people in government were too old to be internet users themselves.  (Obligatory jab at John McCain's technological cluelessness goes here.)  The net result has been a free--in the political sense--internet that has done nothing but grow and innovate for decades now.  

Times and technology have brought us to a bit of a crossroads.  Our leaders have grokked the internets and are no longer describing it as a series of tubes.  President Obama clearly understands the internet and the technologies behind it.  If his campaign wasn't sufficient proof of that, his creation of the offices of Chief Information Officer and Chief Technology Officer, as well as his appointment of Julius Genachowski as chairman of the FCC seems to be.  Simultaneously, the technology and consumer behaviors are changing rapidly.  More and more Americans are getting their news and entertainment via the internet, as opposed to the cable networks.  More importantly, the explosion of smartphones and wireless internet devices sees no end in sight.  As next generation wireless technologies (4G) come online in just a year or two, the volume of data that will be moving through the air is going to be enormous.  Except there are a few problems.  Our wired broadband infrastructure lags behind many developed nations around the world, in terms of overall speed, penetration, and technology.  Similarly, our wireless infrastructure is not the most advanced and is struggling to meet the demands placed on it by a new internet economy and culture.  In short, we are running head first into a new century of unprecedented connectivity with very little road to run on.  

The blame for the United States' current broadband predicament does not lay at any one party's feet.  The primary culprit has been a lack of competition in the marketplace.  Wired and wireless providers often face little to no competition in major markets, which provides no incentive for them to upgrade their service technologies, which are expensive, while allowing them to continue charging the consumer exorbitant rates.  As the National Broadband Plan itself states:

The market for commercial, licensed spectrum does not always behave like a typical commodities market.   

 This may be an early lock for the Understatement of the Year Award. 

Also guilty is the sheer size of the United States.  Vast rural areas and mountainous regions do not support populations that make extending--and maintaining--commercial broadband into those regions cost effective.  The American people are also complicit in this tragedy, having failed for several decades to take up these issues in any meaningful manner, including a failure to make the computer sciences a legitimate part of our public education system.  Finally, our government has failed to act on our behalf.  The FTC and the judicial branch have been wishy-washy at best with regard to the anti-competitive practices of major ISPs.  The executive and legislative branch have been slow or unwilling to recognize that the United States is falling behind in what will be a key factor in future economic growth, stability, and global competition.  

The goal of the National Broadband Plan is to finally lay out a road map by which we might counter-act these issues and move our infrastructure forward, while giving it more agility to adapt to future technologies.  This is an admirable task and it is mostly well undertaken, but the final implementation of some of this plan may end up doing more harm than good.

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THE GOOD

• Improving Access to New and Existing Infrastructure

One of the biggest reasons the broadband markets lack competition is the prohibitive cost-of-entry infrastructure.  The plan calls for more efficient use of existing infrastructure, as well as dramatically reducing the time and cost of seeking permits to build new infrastructure on, through, and over public roads and properties.  It also proposes that all new public projects engage in "dig once" practices, laying out broadband infrastructure where deemed appropriate on new construction sites.  

•  Deployment of a Nationwide Interoperable First Responders Wireless Network

 This is one of those no-brainers that should have been decreed by congress and G.W.B sometime between 9/11/01 and 9/21/01.  Our emergency services and our 911 operators should and could be given an efficient network with which to communicate during emergencies.  The inability of the FBI, the NYPD, and the FDNY to communicate with each other efficiently on the morning of 9/11 is well documented and tragic.  In a world where I can communicate via Skype, twitter, facebook, e-mail, and blog it is unconscionable that our first responders can't spread information nearly as efficiently.  

•  Develop Standards for Health Data Interoperability and Patient Control

 This might seem like a small issue but it's one of the most practical pieces of this plan.  The Healthcare industry has been exceedingly slow at digitizing patient records due to a lack of consensus as to how it should be done and how it would be securely maintained given its inherently private nature.  It's more than sensible that we establish a national standard that maintains a patient's privacy while still allowing access at multiple terminals.

•  Defragment and Reallocate Broadband Spectrum to Foster Competition

 This is the one you're likely to hear the most about, because this is the one that the Telecoms will attempt to prevent--one way or another.  The government controls who can use what spectrum, and a good chunk of the available spectrum is reserved either for federal use only or for the television channels.  This part of the plan would call for compression of the television channels--which in some cases would entail removing some broadcast channels altogether--as well as consolidation of federal spectrum use in order to free up spectrum for additional wireless carriers.  What's not clear is whether the existing wireless moguls--AT&T and Verizon--will be allowed to simply buy up the newly freed up spectrum, defeating the cause of competition.  In any case, additional spectrum for wireless broadband is a necessity.

•  Collect and Publish Publicly Detailed Broadband Data

 I have my doubts that this will ever get accomplished in a meaningful way, but the idea here is that Bureau of Labor Statistics and the FCC would compile all kinds of data on the types of services being provided by the commercial broadband carriers and then publish it.  This would allow you to see what kind of service Time Warner Cable was actually delivering to your neighborhood, as opposed to what they claim they're delivering.  Essentially, this is designed to keep the Telecoms form continuing to lie to you about their services.  

THE BAD

•  Subsidize Telecoms For Lost Intercarrier Fees

 Some might choose to look at this as a carrot on the end of a stick, but paying commercial endeavors for lost revenues on dying technology smacks of a handout and a bribe.  Telecoms pay each other to carry and terminate each other's phone calls on their infrastructure.  The Broadband Plan makes the contention that the loss of these revenues (as broadband is rolled out, VoIP replaces telephony, and thus the need for intercarrier fees) is a disincentive to the roll out of new broadband infrastructure.  It's my belief that the lack of competition is the larger disincentive, and paying the Telecoms the equivalent of these Intercarrier Fees is the equivalent of paying the New York Times for its lost subscribers.  

•  Identity Theft Measures and Clarification of the Relationship Between Users and Online Identity

 The last thing I need is the government to define my relationship with my data and profiles online.  I'm a big boy and more than capable of reading and coming to terms with EULAs and TOS Agreements.  This is roughly the equivalent of the government showing up three hours late to the Naked Twister and Jello Shots Party and reading the rules of Twister to everyone.

•  Interagency Working Group to Coordinate Child Online Safety & Outreach Programs

 I have no problem with parents taking special precautions with when and what their children access on the internet.  There ARE predators out there as well as a staggering amount of gratuitous and offensive content, but protecting children is the purview of the parents, and not the federal government.  If the government wants to give parents better tools for doing that without destroying the internet for the rest of us, then more power to them.  What we don't need is a ton of federal money spent on marginally successful programs to protect children from the internet which the children will immediately circumvent anyway.  

•  Investigating Establishment of a Framework for Taxing Digital Goods & Services.

 No.  No.  No.   E-commerce is about the only part of the economy that is growing these days, why on Earth would you want to curtail that?  My only hope is that they specifically couched their words on this one and that it will remain "investigative".

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   Obviously, there is a great deal more to this plan than I have highlighted here, but I think these are the most interesting or potentially contentious points.  I highly recommend reading or at least perusing the plan itself.  It's illuminating and not overly technical. It is an excellent starter-document for anyone who would like to learn how our internet is structured today and what hurdles will need to be overcome.  The plan also enumerates a whole litany of ways in which increased broadband access can improve education, health care, and the economy.  Most of these improvements are mere suggestions by the FCC for the White House, but I think it's safe to assume they were included in the plan at the behest of the Obama Administration and might receive more than just lip-service.  

The next step will be to get Congress to establish broader jurisdictions for the FCC and allocate funding for some of these projects.  There are a lot of battles still to be fought on many of these issues, but I think the outcome is a foregone conclusion.  The United States will get greater broadband access over the next ten years.  The question is whether it will be created by establishing a competitive market for broadband carriers--in which case it will be cheap for the taxpayer--or by simply giving massive subsidies to the existing telecom giants in exchange for their efforts to increase broadband capacity--in which case it will be incredibly expensive and likely take twice as long to accomplish.