In the week following U.S. Independence Day, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) declared war on cable-based broadband. In a white paper titled "No Competition: How Monopoly Control of the Broadband Internet Threatens Free Speech," the ACLU laid out an aggressive argument that the technical infrastructure of cable TV-based broadband networks threatens to destroy the open and democratic Internet as we know it.
Press regarded the white paper with a mixture of derision and wry surprise. Why is the ACLU—a legal organization known for defending the rights of unpopular groups to say unpopular things—taking a stand on technical issues such as how neighborhoods are wired for cable-TV access and where the routers are housed?
In the case of broadband, the argument is illustrated by my personal experience. I first started using the Internet via a dialup modem. I shopped around for a local ISP that provided the services and prices I wanted, signed a contract, and configured my modem to match the ISP's dial-in policies. Later on, when I graduated to ISDN and ultimately to DSL, access speed improved but the enlistment process remained essentially the same. In every case I had several ISPs to choose from, each offering a different package of services. Some let me run servers from my home, others provided access to premium content, and still others had services geared to the telecommuter.
Last year, fleeing from the shakeup in the DSL market, I migrated to cable broadband. There was no comparison shopping because I had only one choice: my local cable-TV monopoly. With cable, the company that provides the wiring is also the company that provides Internet connectivity. I like some aspects of my broadband service plan, such as a liberal allocation of upload bandwidth, but not others, such as a blanket policy forbidding me from running servers on my home network (and blocking incoming port 80). There's nothing I can do about this because I simply have no alternative.
The ACLU makes the case that without competition at the ISP level, cable companies will act in their own interests to the detriment of their customers. Among the risks cited are the forbidding of Internet applications that compete with cable companies' business plans, such as voice over IP and streaming video, the blocking of controversial services such as P2P and Webcasting, and additional fees to use services like private virtual networks. In fact, such restrictions are already enforced in many locations. More speculatively, the ACLU foresees the day when cable companies will force subscribers to access the Internet through a particular home page that shills the offerings of a select set of affiliates, while blocking access to certain parts of the Internet either because the content is deemed inappropriate or because it is offered by a competitor.
The ACLU's answer to this risk is paradoxical: Use government regulation to encourage free-market competition. The model for this solution is the telephone industry. In the 1970s, a series of FCC regulations and court cases forced a reluctant AT&T to open the phone system to competition. One decision forced the phone company to allow foreign devices to be attached to its network, thereby enabling the development of modems and fax machines. Another decision prevented the phone company from levying per-packet and per-minute surcharges on information services, thereby making ISPs economically viable. Through these rules and others, the telephone system became a "common carrier," a roadway that was free for all to use.
The cable system is not a common carrier. It is a private highway in which the same company controls both the road and the roadside rest stops and convenience stands. So the obvious solution would be to turn the cable networks into common carriers by enacting regulations that would open them to multiple ISPs. But whenever the issue of open access is raised by local or federal agencies, the cable companies respond that it is technically impossible. A lengthy technical document produced by Columbia Telecommunications Corporation, an ACLU consultant, refutes this claim, noting several solutions using current technology that would put third-party ISPs on equal footing with the cable company's own.
The ACLU is probably wasting its time. Most cable broadband subscribers are content with their service, and there is a grassroots movement to encourage legislators to buck the current anti-regulatory environment. Or perhaps some far-sighted individuals in Congress or the FCC will read the white paper and begin to ponder the cable-TV monopoly's implications for the future of the Internet. I hope they do.
Lincoln is an M.D. and Ph.D. who designs information systems for the human genome project at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, New York. You can contact him at [email protected].
