Paul Kapustka's Blog

In fine lawyerly terms, the Fourth Freedom as envisioned by former FCC chairman Michael Powell (who unfortunately could never deliver the political strength to turn his beliefs into real policy) says that "consumers should receive meaningful information regarding their service plans." Powell went on to say that "I challenge all facets of the industry to ensure that broadband consumers can easily obtain the information they need to make rational choices among an ever-expanding array of different service and pricing plan(s)."

As we all know, service and pricing plans are typically clear as mud. And now they're even turning Orwellian, claiming that customer calling and Internet usage data are really the property of the phone company. However, don't expect to see such language and terms of usage in the big letters on billboards. Instead, it will remain buried in legalese, just like those software agreements that everyone clicks "accept" without actually reading.

This isn't a new argument. But here's something that is: If service providers want to be allowed to offer tiered services, then why can't we have some sort of regulation that makes them prove that they are delivering what we pay for? It's the same kind of regulation that keeps providers of other commodities (milk, gasoline, alcohol) in line, ensuring open competition in the marketplace. Those industries have regulations for scales and measurements that assure the consumer gets what is paid for. Why can't we have similar regulation for Internet service?

Better yet, why can't the gubmint require the service providers to build a little meter that shows bandwidth usage? That way, when Verizon or someone else makes a claim that the users are somehow to blame for overloading the network, users can say horsehockey! I paid for this really slow connection, and I aim to use all I can!

Alternatively, it may fall to the private sector to provide this freedom, an idea I've touched on before. Though FCC chairman Kevin Martin thinks that public measuring websites are already satisfying this need, I think we need to go several steps further, and bring the network measurement tools being used by large enterprises into the consumer arena -- as long as I'm spending someone else's cash, I suggest Google's stockpile as a good place to start.

Why not build a free, Internet-based widget that would accurately measure Internet traffic from an end-user standpoint, with customizable color-coded tools to allow me to track Vonage or Skype usage against my overall bandwidth allotment? Can't be that hard, and it might be a better business than yet another free video hosting site.

Then we could also build widgets or make it a law to publish metro and core traffic patterns -- just as we currently regulate other scare resources, like air traffic routes, navigable waterways or highways. Again, if politicians won't take the lead (imagine that), there may be a private-enterprise method like those found in other arenas, such as metro automobile traffic. The reason for all this is, again, to debunk (or prove?!) that the networks aren't being clogged by Google's servers, as some "experts" would have you believe.

So for the fourth, let's pledge to make sure that at the very least, the Fourth Freedom is preserved: All we have to gain are the stats to the services we have already purchased. And all there is to hide is... what?