The Telecommunications Story

At my session at Connectivity 2002 yesterday (see my previous days’ blogs as well as Halley’s astute coverage including her pilloring of my presentation … and Dan Bricklin has just blogged his take on the conference), I asked the group to come up with ways of explaining to an intelligent layperson (well, a senator) what the technological argument is for fighting the incumbent telecommunication companies. The idea was to boil it down to the simplest possible story from the technological point of view. What’s the picture technologists should paint for the rest of us?

I’m nowhere near as up on this area as just about anyone you’ll meet, but it’s good to know that ignorance doesn’t deter me from making large-scale pronouncements. So, here’s what I would say:

Let’s just agree that the Internet is the best way our species has ever come up with for spreading free speech and free markets on a global scale. Screwing this up would be an epochal mistake. And, we want to make sure that we Americans don’t lock ourselves out of this arena, repeating the mistakes we made in, say, the auto industry. So, what do we do?

The Internet has succeeded because it Keeps It Simple, Stupid: it just moves bits around. And we want to keep it as a simple bit conveyer belt. That way, any bright new ideas someone has for products and services that can be done with bits — a little thing we like to call “innovation” — can count on the Net for getting bits from A to B with incredible efficiency.

But there’s a danger. The old types of networks have assumed that it’s always good to be tuned for particular applications — for example, a network specifically for telephone calls. But tuning a network for one type of application means that it’s “de-tuned” for others, and the strength of the Internet has been precisely that it just moves bits without caring what type of applications are sending the bits. To keep the Internet open for innovation we have to keep it the simplest possible “de-tuned” bit conveyer belt.

The temptation to tune the network is inevitable if control of it is given to a group that has one particular type of service to provide. That’s why it’s vital that we keep the provision of the network separate from the provision of applications that use the network. This has to be enforced at the technical level but also at the application, business and regulatory levels.

Yes, this doesn’t cover other vital issues such as free speech and the need to remove municipal regulations that hinder smaller competitors, but the aim is to keep this simple.

Comments, criticisms, suggestions, humiliating exposures of the fact that I am merely a poseur? Most important: Other ways of telling the story?

PS: I helped David Isenberg draft a similar sort of story at NetParadox. And at that site you’ll find links to “The Rise of the Stupid Network” and David Reed’s work on the End-to-End network that are behind this simple, stupid re-telling.

Categories: Uncategorized dw