On November 17th there was an oxford style debate on the topic of whether or not there should be a law ensuring network neutrality. I planned on live blogging this event, but I realized that I actually don’t know what live blogging is, and my computer died before I even got to the event. So, I decided to “live blog” on paper and then record some of the more interesting comments from that panelists here. This post will be a collection of statements and ideas from the panelists in a vaguely chronological order as the event progressed. I warn in advance that not all of the quotes are word for word, my point in this post is just to share some thoughts that some very intelligent people had that night.
Opening Statements
Tim Wu
Tim Wu is the guy who came and talked to us about net neutrality and the guy that came up with the term. Tim’s ideas were about protecting the small companies that rely on the network.
“[Net neutrality is about] The right to start a company without permission from telcos.”
Low cost of market entry is a tenant of capitalism
“Freedom to innovate is the backbone of the internet economy and the reason a net neutrality law is necessary.”
James Assey
James pointed to the fact that there was an inability to reach a consensus on the definition of network neutrality and made the point that Powell’s four statues of the internet have led to growth so far for the reason why a law is not necessary
Brad Burnham
Mr. Burnham is a venture capitalist with a group called Union Square Ventures. His perspective came from that of a businessman that has relied on the internet to fuel his businesses.
-Two tennants that were important to growth of the internet:
1.End to end connectivity
2.Architecture was layered which separated applications from the physical layer
There’s no way to invest in a applications layer when I have to rely on permission from telcos.
Nicholas Economides
Economidies is a NYU professor and the author of the blog “The Economics of Networks.” Despite being recognized as one of the best websites on economics, the site is hilariously old school looking and worth checking out for that reason alone. I swear this isn’t from the way back machine http://www.stern.nyu.edu/networks/site.html.
Innovation from edge applications is huge
openness, non discrimination have created this
The internet is the most successful network ever
Telcos say no because their business models are threatened, voice over ip threatens phone companies and video over the internet threatens cable companies
The last mile (the expensive cost of running a cable from a main network line to a person’s house) has concentrated power so the telcos can kill net neutrality
Christopher Yoo
Mr. Yoo is a professor at UPenn and spoke primarily about the innovation that occurs on the network side of the debate, not the application side
Next generation web 2.0 is a real heavy drawer of bandwidth
This is the end of “one size fits all” solutions
A broader range of applications demand leads to an evolution of the network
After their opening statements they debated back and forth. The following are what I thought were interesting or evocative statements.
“We just can’t do it.” Was a common line repeated by the representative of AT&T. He strongly believed that with the demands being put on the network, and their inability to manage the network more directly, they won’t be able to pay for the development of a stronger, more prolific broadband network.
Economides – if telcos were willing to say “these are 15 horrible things we’re not going to do” it would make things a lot easier for people who support net neutrality.
Because there are only two options for providing “the internet” to the home, the free market fails in this regard. Without competition due to a duopoly, the only options are to add a third pipe and create competition or to regulate.
Quinn – Shouldn’t people be allowed to by quality of service if they want it? If they demand quality, they should get it.
Economides – You’ve got it on it’s head, if people really wanted this service, they would be begging for it, instead you’ve got AT&T saying the people want it.
Yoo – Bigger pipes or new technologies, we don’t know what the answer is yet but we shouldn’t let the government decide.
Less innovation, less social benefit, winners and losers, the remaining bandwidth will become overstressed; all of this will happen if there is a “fast lane” internet service.
Discrimination by telcos hurts growth.
Looking back on that now, I can see that when the debate got really interesting I apparently stopped taking notes, for that I apologize. You can watch the full debate in nice high quality video here if you want the whole story. Spoiler warning! Oxford debates have a winning side and a losing side. In this debate, the side that said there should be a law guaranteeing network neutrality won out, by quite a large margin. In the end it was a fascinating debate, and it ending up coming down to one side saying that it’s all about maximizing the ability for small companies to use the net equally and the other side saying that with all of these little guys using our network it’s getting to expensive to try to maintain it. If you’re at all interested in net neutrality, these guys were all really smart, and you’ll learn a lot about the topic if you check it out.
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