Admitting 5 Things About Broadband

[Commentary] Over at The Switch, Timothy Lee offered his list of 5 things neither side of the broadband debate wants to admit. I wanted to take a moment to add a bit of color to the list, to try and give you a sense of how we think about some of these things.

1. Wireless: While no one would argue that the state of mobile software has improved massively since 2007, I don’t know that I would go so far as to say that concerns about network operator control are necessarily obsolete. Even today we have carriers preventing some types of services from running on phones connected to their network. And carriers are still working hard to prevent you from unlocking the phone that you own from their network.
2. Wireline: DSL and satellite are not viable broadband competitors. Coming to terms with this state of affairs would bring us a huge way towards developing rational broadband policies.
3. Broadband experimentation: We get wary that “experimentation” can also be interpreted as an excuse for existing ISPs to inject themselves into the value chain through data caps or special priority fast lanes. In a world with limited broadband competition, there are few market protections for consumers with ISPs who want to experiment by exploiting their control over customers.
4. Discrimination concerns: Video is not the only potential victim of discrimination. The Internet moves quickly and new applications can seemingly emerge overnight. While the discussion is about video today, that doesn’t mean that it will be about video tomorrow.
5. Network Neutrality: There are going to be a number of developments that raise concerns about Internet access but have nothing to do with network neutrality. That being said, net neutrality is an answer to some of those concerns. Verizon recently explained that the Federal Communication Commission’s net neutrality rules were the only thing preventing it from trying to force some websites and services to pay to get special access to its customers. I’m pretty confident that the existence of network neutrality is at least, in part, the reason that problematic behavior has migrated to other places in the network.