Looks like the battle over net neutrality is going from being mere saber-rattling to a serious no-holds barred legal mess. Last week the US Congress approved a bill that gives phone companies permission to offer television. Most wanted that bill to mandate that network neutrality would remain in place, but that didn’t happen. This gives phone companies and other broadband providers the option to charge for access from content providers. The bill has now been kicked up to the US Senate, and while there is little likelihood that the bill is going to get passed this year, it still has many in Silicon Valley worried, most of all Google.
Vint Cerf, one of the key voices in the overall development of the Internet, and a Google VP (and Chief Internet Evangelist) is saying that if things do come to a pass, the company might have to resort to legal means. “If we are not successful in our arguments … then we will simply have to wait until something bad happens and then we will make known our case to the Department of Justice’s anti-trust division,” he said at a news conference in Bulgaria.
What it really means is that Google et.al can drag this thing for a long time, but they also have to remember that the phone companies are masters of legal posturing and regulation. The best way to fight them is to outspend them in terms of lobbying dollars. Yup, a big fund - say $500 million - put together by Google, eBay and others could be enough to swing even the staunchest supporters of phone companies to the other side. Sounds crude, but as they say Money Talks!
8 comments so far
7:35 AM PT
I really just kind of wish that Google would become their own telco. They have the fiber. They’re pretty much brilliant at whatever they try. Perhaps they could even create a jazz channel that actually shows jazz…
8:25 AM PT
An interesting angle to the Net Neutrality discussion that I haven’t seen much discussion on is that nearly all politicians now fall into the content side of the equation.
Thorne could just as well have been talking about politicians instead of Google. It’s pretty easy to imagine him saying something like: “The network builders are spending a fortune constructing and maintaining the networks that politicians intend to ride on with nothing but cheap servers, raking in untold thousands of dollars of contributions and volunteers.”
With this in mind, I wrote up a little 3 step strategy to make anyone care about Net Neutrality.
This isn’t some telecom/google discussion, it’s about the future of publishing and free (as in freedom) communications.
9:07 AM PT
This doesn’t indicate a “no-holds barred legal mess”. Rather, Cerf suggesting potential future DOJ involvement if “something bad happens” is very much of a moderate, realistic statement that will likely be supported by some on both sides of the NN debate.
10:37 AM PT
Philip,
Google could become their own telco. It’s not as expensive as you would think to build a network. See more here
(link) capitalist/2005/11/sbcs1_competit.html
11:41 AM PT
Google & Yahoo need to get serious and begin paying for that part of others networks (big pipes) they use to maximize their AD revenues.
The RBOC are not stupid and will not create any type Network Pricing structure or restrict any access that will drive consumers away from them.
They (RBOC) need to contend with both the MSO and the new Wireless Muni Networks being deployed in the last mile. Competition will again set the boundaries here and the Broadband consumer will decide what they want to pay for.
Jacomo
1:47 PM PT
Remeber, Cerf was at MCI (pre-Bernie takeover and meltdown) and MCI was the ultimate legal fighter in the Telco space.
1:58 PM PT
“he said at a news conference in Bulgaria.” - this link is broken!
5:04 PM PT
A lot of people have missed the critical part of the picture here. The proposed Net Neutrality bill includes a section outlining how anyone can challenge an application.
This kind of legislation was used in the 1970s by large media owners and broadcast networks to systematically challenge and permanently table all applications by individuals and small organizations (including many community groups) for licenses to set up low-wattage television stations that would have had broadcast ranges of only a few miles.
The major media entities were barred by the same law from owning or operating such little stations. The law’s intent was to empower the people to create truly independent television broadcasting, but the application objection clause rendered the whole process unusable.
Google and other major bandwidth users can use the challenge clause to stop or delay any Telco’s building up a new network. The Telcos say they need to move the major users to new infrastructure that would be used only by them and therefore should only be paid for by them.
Ultimately, we the consumers will have to pay for any new infrastructure, but clearly Google, eBay, Yahoo!, and the other large entities don’t have any plans in place for monetizing a new high-bandwidth infrastructure. So they have no interest in paying for the construction (and use of) any such networks.
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