Paul Kapustka's Blog

As usual, the telecom analysts at Stifel Nicolaus (a group that formerly worked for Legg, Mason) have this thing hammered down: According to their latest flash report, the analysts think that the telcos will largely gain "the freedom they are seeking from traditional common carrier/non-discrimination type regulations," and be able to offer new services as they see fit.

Their reasoning? A combination of factors, not the least of which is the fact that AT&T and Verizon are well-connected on the Hill, and have many active backers. The telco/cableco duopoly also has an easy to understand, coherent message: We won't block any applications or services, they say. But that shouldn't preclude us from offering other services that allow us to recoup our investment in new networks.

On the Network Neutrality proponent side, there isn't even a clear group effort to oppose the telcos, and (other than Wyden's bill) not much in the way of concrete proposals as to what Net Neutrality even means. One of the biggest proponents of an open Internet, former Calif. PUC commissioner Susan Kennedy, told me last year that while she believes in the idea of Net Neutrality, she couldn't find a sensible way to write regulations that would achieve the goals in a reasonable manner. Martin Geddes has also been vocal in explaining why such rules could do more harm than good.

So is the future bleak? Will we all be forced into an AT&T/Verizon/Comcast version of CompuServe? Will costs for Net access continue to climb, as Sen. Wyden predicted on his conference call yesterday?

Maybe not. The Net Neutrality movement is not without its own arrows, and to succeed the points need to be made clear and succinct, so that non-technical members of Congress can understand their import. The first point, of not allowing service providers to directly block any service, seems to have been won. The next step is likely to be something Wyden mentioned yesterday during his call, the idea of "transparency," or the ability of consumers to see, in great detail, the level of service they are paying for.

"The transparency provision is the heart and soul" of his proposal, Wyden said during the call, where he also -- accurately -- predicted that few in the media listening would understand what he was talking about. When you have such transparency (think of it as a Service Level Agreement for consumers), Wyden said, consumers can act as their own enforcement bureau, with the data to back up complaints of poor or degraded service.

The idea of requiring such transparency was also kicked around at the recent Silicon Flatirons conference in Boulder, Colo., and the RBOC representatives present there didn't have a good answer to the question of "why can't I get the statistics about the service you are selling me?" It's a great argument, and since the tools are already widely available, one that will be hard for any service provider to object to.

So -- proponents of a more open net -- it's time to circle the wagons and move the debate to the next level, instead of dabbling at the theoretical level in discussions that may be self-satisfying but do not deal directly with the fact that telecom reform legislation is already underway. We'll leave the last words here to Martin, who believes that new technical solutions will move faster, perhaps even beyond the current Internet as we know it, to offer a better future. To wit:

Having a “two tier” network is something we should look forward to. We want more Internets! Plural! They may continue to interconnect; they may decide that the Internet Mk1 [ed. note: his sarcastic title for our current "Internet"] is more a source of digital pollution than valuable content. I just can’t see how any “stop the clock — we’re all just comfortable as we are!” neutrality rule helps us reach new and better places.

Later in his essay, he adds:

So neutrality rules that entrench our “Internet Mk1” as somehow sacred, hallowed and for all time are just totally counter-productive. Better to allow Verizon to screw over their customers and make it worthwhile for someone to bypass them entirely using newer technology.

And maybe some transparency rules, just in case.

WYDEN CALL SMACKDOWN:

Don't think we need a full post on this, so I'll just add a couple awards here. The "what the hell am I doing on this call, anyway" award goes to the several listeners who displayed their level of knowledge by asking "what is Network Neutrality, anyway?" Glad to see we're not afraid of stupid questions! There are no stupid questions, except maybe yours.

And the "#-5 means mute in Meetingplace" award goes to all the professional journalists on the line who didn't realize the call was open, meaning we could hear all that background chatter you just had to make (even prompting Wyden to ask people to quiet down at one point, a request that was ignored). The best was after Wyden delivered his money quote, a stirring moment of passion that was heralded by one caller (presumably talking to someone else) who said out loud, "Wow, wow, wow... great quote!"

Glad it was good for you, too, dude!