The Internet at Risk: Broadband Networks and Narrow Visions

 

At first glance, the recent debate over competitive access to the emerging broadband cable networks-the Internet delivery platform of choice in the coming years-seemed like just another corporate squabble. Initially, AOL challenged AT&T over access to the latter's growing cable holdings. Once it became a cable landlord itself, however, with its acquisition of Time Warner (the nation's second-largest cable provider, behind AT&T), AOL quickly retreated from the broadband battles. Instead of standing by its call for open-access regulations, AOL now claimed that the marketplace would provide a solution to the open-access puzzle.

That may well be the case, but a market-based solution, negotiated in the back rooms of corporate America, is not likely to be one that will serve the public interest. And the basic ground rules for the broadband revolution are much too important to leave to a handful of media conglomerates to determine. For the deployment of the new, high-speed, "last-mile" connections will largely shape the ways in which we'll communicate in the twenty-first century. These broadband networks will affect both the nature and range of the news and entertainment we receive, as well as the extent to which we will be able to exchange information and share our views with others. In particular, a cable-controlled broadband system threatens to undermine the basic open, democratic character of the Internet:

Access: Under the cable industry's closed model, all but a handful of the nation's 6,000-plus ISPs will be excluded from the new broadband networks.

Diversity: Content owned by or affiliated with the reigning cable providers will receive preferential service, relegating competitive and nonprofit material to the slower lanes.

Democracy: Tiered levels of service, priced according to the ability of both producers and consumers to pay for premium service, will erode the concept of Universal Service, limiting the access of many Americans to online services.

Choice: Far fewer ISPs, differentiated levels of service, and the closed cable model all add up to severely reduced choice for American consumers.

Industry's gain, in other words, will be society's loss. At stake, then, is the potential for an open, democratic network, one that combines the ease and ubiquity of television with the variety and interactivity of the Internet. This may be our last, best chance, in fact, to establish the electronic "civic sector" that has proven so elusive in an increasingly market-driven media system. "In a field where exaggeration is common," concludes Andrew J. Schwartzman, president of the Media Access Project, in a front-page New York Times story, "it is fair to say that this issue is regarded as the most important public policy question in telecommunications for the decade."

Unfortunately, no one in Washington, under heavy pressure from industry lobbyists, appears ready to answer that question. FCC Chairman William E. Kennard, for example, has adopted a timid, wait-and-see posture at a time when a firm public-interest response is needed. "... [W]ith competition and deregulation as our touchstones," Kennard explains, "the FCC has taken a hands-off deregulatory approach to the broadband market. We approved the AT&T-TCI deal without imposing conditions that they open their network." Such a policy, however, subjects the Internet to the same closed, cable-TV model that has limited programming diversity and consumer choice alike over the past two decades. Instead of establishing a framework in which ISPs are granted nondiscriminatory access to the new cable networks (not free access, but simply access under the same terms and conditions that the cable companies extend to their affiliated ISPs) the FCC chairman has lent his support to AT&T's monopolistic control of its extensive cable broadband holdings.

More ominous still is the new network architecture that cable operators are in the process of deploying, a system that will alter the very nature of online access for millions of Americans. A chilling glimpse of the broadband future was offered recently in a series of "white papers" released by Cisco Systems, one of the leading suppliers of broadband hardware and software. By Cisco's own admission, the new architecture will be rich in opportunities for cable operators to "optimize service profits," by granting preferential treatment to certain kinds of content, by limiting access to competitive traffic, and by "...segmenting the market and charging what the market will bear within each market segment."

Under such a system of monitored and preferential service, the Internet will no longer be the open, democratic system that we enjoy today. It will become, instead, much more of a "branded" environment, with premium service for certain products and certain customers, leaving others with second- and third-class transport (or possibly no carriage at all, for those who cannot afford even the lowest tier of sliding-scale fees). That's the kind of environment, moreover, that will only exacerbate the problem of spiraling campaign costs, as the "digital divide," affecting all segments of society, becomes more subtle and more pernicious than ever.

Among those likely to find themselves on the wrong side of that divide are nonprofit organizations, who will face even more obstacles in their attempts to address various public-interest issues online. So, too, will small businesses find it even more difficult to compete successfully in an environment in which the large media conglomerates exert even more control over online traffic. A number of Wall Street analysts, in fact, predict that a closed broadband Internet will threaten the future growth of our economy. The possibilities for democratic discourse, for educational opportunities, and for cultural expression will be greatly reduced in a delivery system that favors big business over small, e-commerce over e-democracy, and public relations over public service.

Free of such market-based constraints, on the other hand, the new broadband networks could bring a vast array of new programming to the home, at once extending the reach of the Internet (which currently serves only a third of the nation's households) and enhancing its content (much of which is currently constrained by the bandwidth limitations of dial-up modems). But this public-interest potential will not be realized without concerted action on a variety of fronts:

• To educate the public about the nature of the emerging broadband landscape.

• To support civic, educational, and cultural uses of the new media.

• To evaluate the network architecture of the new system to prevent discriminatory handling of competitive or noncommercial content.

Only in this manner, with a systematic, cooperative assessment of the new broadband networks, can public-interest advocates hope to be heard amidst the towering voices of the telecommunications giants.