Lee Drutman: The real two-tiered Internet problem

01:00 AM EDT on Friday, May 19, 2006

BERKELEY, Calif.

UP TILL NOW, the Internet has mostly been an anything-goes world, largely free of both content discrimination and regulatory oversight. But recently, Internet-service providers (ISPs), such as AT&T and Verizon, have made rumblings that they would like to charge high-intensity content providers, such as Google, a little extra, to ensure the speediest content delivery. Such fees are necessary, say the ISPs, to help finance a faster Internet for everyone.

Unfair, say such heavily trafficked content providers as Google, Yahoo, Amazon.com and eBay, which would be asked to pay more. If the Verizons of the world demand a shakedown for faster service, pretty soon the competitive, free-flowing Internet we know and love will start to disappear. Instead of individual users' voting with their clicks, ISPs will be picking the winners and losers, with their tolls.

The proposed solution is "net neutrality," a legislative measure to ensure that Internet-service providers do not create a two-tiered Internet that gives preference to some content over others, by creating a fast lane for content providers that want to pay and a slow lane for those that don't. Supporters of this approach, mostly Democrats, are trying to get a net-neutrality provision into a major telecommunication bill moving forward in Congress. So far, they've been unsuccessful, but the battle is far from over.

The Internet-service providers are fighting hard, and understandably. They've set up a phony grassroots campaign, "Hands off our Internet," which makes the usual anti-regulation arguments: The Internet has worked well without government regulation. The service providers have never discriminated and have no plans to do so. Besides, even if they did, and consumers were unhappy, the market would discipline such errant behavior. And isn't it actually fairer to force bandwidth hogs to pay more, instead of making everyone pay the same, regardless of use? And so on.

Such conservative heavyweights as Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform are sending out action alerts to help the cause.

In favor of net neutrality, a coalition called Save the Internet now boasts more than 500 members and more than 600,000 signers of the petition "Don't Let Congress Ruin the Internet." The powerhouse liberal group MoveOn also has an online petition: "Internet providers like AT&T and Verizon are lobbying Congress hard to gut Network Neutrality, the Internet's First Amendment and the key to Internet freedom. Many members of Congress take campaign contributions from these companies."

But don't members of Congress also take contributions from companies such as Yahoo and Microsoft? And wasn't MoveOn founded by a bunch of Silicon Valley folks? Come to think of it, why are advocacy groups jumping into this issue? And why is it such a partisan issue? It couldn't be that Democrats and liberal advocacy groups are now carrying water for the Googles and eBays of the world, while Republicans and conservative advocacy groups are carrying water for the Verizons and Comcasts of the world -- could it?

Concerns on both sides are probably overstated, whipped up by the corporations with much at stake. Sure, we don't want Comcast deciding which Web sites load and which Web sites don't; but how exactly will letting the Internet-service providers charge the heaviest users a little extra for speedy delivery shut out smaller sites, whose servers probably can't keep up with top speed anyway? Nor does it seem convincing that a little regulation is going to stifle investment in the Internet. Either way, it's likely to be the consumers who pay most of the bill.

Meanwhile, lots of more pressing Internet issues are not getting debated. There's little talk, for example, of how to ensure that affordable broadband service reaches into every home -- even though a recent survey by the International Telecommunications Union found that the United States ranked 16th globally in broadband penetration. Nor is there real discussion about U.S. consumers' paying more for worseInternet service than do consumers in many other industrial nations (Japan, for instance, has widely accessible "high-speed" broadband that is 16 times faster than that in the United States, for only $22 a month.)

And while no one has yet had to pay for priority service on the Internet, the issue remains very real in Congress. Since 1998, AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner have spent a combined $230.9 million on lobbying and campaign contributions. During the same period, Amazon, eBay, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have spent a combined $71.2 million on such efforts. No wonder this is such a hotly contested issue.

It's true that a two-tiered system could create discrimination, and on that ground, net neutrality is probably good policy. But the bigger problem these days is the two-tiered system of access in Washington.

Lee Drutman, a frequent contributor, is the co-author of The People's Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy, Berrett-Koehler Publishers (ldrutman@gmail.com).

http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/projo_20060519_19drut.21b5bb85.html