Neither Worldly nor Wide:
How Broadband Systems will Narrow the Net

There is nothing in the architecture of the broadband Internet (i.e., high-speed transmission via cable, DSL, satellite, or wireless systems) that is inherently restrictive. Indeed, the increase in transmission speeds alone--theoretically up to 100 times that of standard dial-up modems--should usher in an era of expanded online service, with streaming audio and video becoming as common as static text and graphics are today.

Unfortunately, in the absence of public-interest safeguards, the promise of broadband may never be realized in practice, for three basic reasons:

Data Management: the use of type-of-service (TOS) and quality-of-service (QOS) provisions of the Internet protocol (IP) to favor some data traffic over others. Thus instead of resolving disputes between competing claims on network resources in an evenhanded, equitable fashion, policy-based routing might be employed to expedite the delivery of content affiliated with the network owner, while relegating competing content to slower lanes of traffic.

Proprietary Content: Network owners will use a variety of enhancements (e.g., local caching, navigational aids, menus, program guides, start screens) to highlight their own and affiliated content at the expense of other fare (including noncommercial programming), which will be excluded from on-screen menus and program guides. Even when such enhancements are made available to other programmers, the cost involved may be prohibitive for most nonprofits.

Differentiated Service: The broadband environment will be characterized by tiered levels of service, subscription and pay-per-click programming, and a general distinction between the "haves" and the "have mores." In this context, without the kind of allowances that it has received in the analog world (e.g., spectrum set-asides, e-rate subsidies) the nonprofit sector will suffer.

Especially as it migrates to the television and set-top box in various ITV implementations, the Internet faces a critical trade-off that may forever change its character. For what we gain in speed and simplicity of online access in the new broadband systems, we stand to lose in depth and diversity. The real danger is not that the Internet will become ever more commercialized as it makes this transition into the mainstream media. For that trend, which began with the privatization of the Internet in the early 1990s, is inevitable in any case. The real danger is that in adapting itself for the streamlined, menu-driven interface of ITV, and for the small screens of various wireless portable devices (including phones and PDAs), the Internet will be reduced to a small subset of featured Web sites. Within the broadband context, in other words, the World Wide Web will be neither worldly nor wide.

Part of the reason for this narrowing of the Net is technological. The Web, in its present configuration, with its graphically rich, often complex pages (over 2 billion in all), is not well suited to either television screens (which lack the resolution of computer monitors) or to small, wireless devices (which lack the requisite display size). While pages can be translated into versions that conform to either the ITV or the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) format, the expense and complexity of maintaining multiple sets of pages is beyond the reach of all but the largest, most well funded sites.

But another part of the broadband Internet problem (and the part that may prove insurmountable, absent regulation) is purely economic. Seeking to extend to the online world the same near-monopoly status that it enjoys with video programming in most markets, the cable industry is designing and deploying ITV systems that offer only the illusion of online choice. Dubbed "walled gardens" by supporters and skeptics alike, cable's new "managed-content areas" amount to proprietary versions of "Internet Lite."

While it remains to be seen how the wireless and satellite broadband networks will be deployed, the world of DSL, only marginally more competitive than cable in its accommodation of competitive ISPs, poses many of the same risks as cable to the future openness and diversity of the Internet. In a thoroughly commercialized environment (regardless of the platform involved), the survival of noncommercial programmers, and thus of the public interest, is at risk.