Curtain Call

Unfortunately, I have decided to stop updating Save the Tubes in order to spend time pursuing other interests.  Hopefully, this series of blog posts will remain available and viewable for some time to come.

Perhaps this blog will serve as a reference point to future generations.  A primitive, two-dimensional snapshot of an era when the Internet, and the United States, was threatened by weak policy and insatiable corporate interests.  Conversely, this blog could end up a reminder of a better time when the Internet wasn't such a high-cost, specialized commodity and Americans weren't stuck buying from, listening to, and investing in a handful of massive, politically entrenched corporations.  Assuming, of course, that this blog will be accessible in that future.

However, I have high hopes for Net Neutrality in the US.  Despite their cooperation with Verizon in combating the FCC proposal in December of 2010, Google will likely be the pivotal players in the Net Neutrality debate.  An open, fair, and free Internet is what Google was built upon, and something they must continue to support in order to survive and thrive.  A corporation like Comcast-NBC thrives through hundreds of various corporate channels and, as a result, seeks to lock down competition in order to support their various interests.  A conglomerate like Comcast-NBC is massive, and imposing, but their size can easily work against them in this way.  If Comcast-NBC relies on lobbying and policypushing to lay an unfair playing field for themselves to exploit, they are likely doomed to lose their many battles.

It has been enthralling and exhausting trying to keep up with Net Neutrality, but I feel it serves as both a brilliant microcosm of the information freedom debate and an undeniably critical moment for the United States economically and politically.

Global perspectives

The notion that the United States of America is the most advanced and prosperous nation in the world is one that has been fading over the past decade or two.  The US has slowly been sliding down the worlds national rankings in healthcare, education, and overall quality of life.  Broadband speeds reflect this sort of declination as well, not in terms of regress, but through slower progress.

As a nation without any sort of military force, Japan has a great deal of wealth it chooses to put toward technological pursuits.  This, paired with its rather small overall size, allows the island nation to maintain a very concentrated, cheap, high-speed satellite Internet service that boasts rates 12 times cheaper and faster than the top US networks.  Japan owes its success to regulations very similar to Network Neutrality.

Years ago, Japan was far behind the United States in terms of service speed and cost, but now they have us beaten tenfold.  The island nation owe's its success to regulations very similar to Network Neutrality, as well as its manageable size.  Japan has their entire nation bathed in broadband, while the US is currently straining for subsidies to reach rural areas.  After observing US policy pushes, Japan adopted an imposed an Open Access rule on its telecoms then provided them with subsidies and tax breaks necessary to lay and expand a fiber optic broadband service.  The results of their decision to adopt a Net Neutrality rule are apparent today, with Japan leading the world in access speed, cost, and availability.

Data Growth and Data Caps

An important aspect of the time we live in is the reality of data growth.  Many speculators expect the exponential explosive growth of technology within the coming years, while more adventurous futurists look forward to the Technological Singularity.  One thing, however, is undeniable: our hard drives, files, and data transfers are getting larger every year and our Internet structure needs to keep up.  In order to understand the problem of ISP data caps a glance to the future is necessary.

The development of new video codecs bring us cleaner, smoother video, developments in audio technology lend to clearer sound, and digital cameras fall into obsolescence within days while images from newer models are ever sharper. (The current record being 192 gigabytes for a single image!).  All of these factors dramatically lend to the growth of data.  Naturally, the growth of data effects files transferred along the Internet as well, leading to larger bandwidths and the need for faster data rates.  As you can imagine, this makes the bandwidth caps set by ISPs problematic.

ISPs in the US have been careful to set their bandwidth caps high enough that the majority of customers go unaware and unaffected, but low enough that, assuming the caps are not adjusted or abolished, those customers will be swamped with overcharges in just a few short years.  "Overage charges", like overdraft fees on checking accounts, are intentionally under-represented limitations and penalties on services which result in massive fees and huge sources of revenue for the service providers.  These sort of practices are decidedly underhanded, so much so that federal regulators were recently forced to refuse banks the right to force customers into debit overdraft fees.

Japan is leading the pack in data management while Canada is beginning to make the necessary efforts.  Consumers in the US need to be made aware of their Internet futures before ISPs get too greedy and ingrained in polotics.

Canada Promises The Internet

The New Democratic Party of Canada recently unveiled their new election platform for 2011.  Following the Bell Internet cap scare from earlier in the year, the NDP has made the decision to emphasize Internet Access for the nation as one of its campaign goals.  The constraints they hope to implement are bold, broad, and likely, somewhat unrealistic.  

The party makes a very direct reference to Net Neutrality, stating that, "We will enshrine “net neutrality” in law, end price gouging and “net throttling,” with clear rules for Internet Service Providers (ISPs), enforced by the CRTC."  This alone is something of an ambitious goal for Canada's democrats, but the group goes even further, stating their intention to "prohibit all forms of usage-based billing by Internet Service Providers."  While usage based billing is not necessarily a violation of Network Neutrality, it does open the doors for ISPs to charge inflated prices for simple services and gouge their customers.

For example, text messaging is a popular form of usage based billing and, in some ways, price gouging.  Some providers charge their customers a flat rate for every text message sent.  Some of the lowest cost plans providers offer charge .15 cents to send a single text message (roughly 140bytes) across their network in an age when the Internet can transfer files more than 1 billion times that size in seconds.

Canadian Democrats are attempting to refuse ISPs the opportunity to unfairly exploit their customers while ensuring the Internet remains what it should be, a massive, open, and widely available network of information and communication.

Georgia Tech to Test the Net

Just last week, on March 22nd, 2011, Google announced its decision to grant Georgia Tech $1 Million in funding to establish a method of monitoring Internet transparency.  Google's decision comes as a bit of a relief following their recent and questionable partnership with Verizon when they, together, combated an FCC proposal regarding Net Neutrality.

Georgia Tech stated in a press release their intention to "create a 'transparency ecosystem,' where more and more users will take advantage of the measurement tools, which in turn will improve the accuracy and comprehensiveness of our analysis."  Effectively, Georgia Tech hopes to offer a set of tools for download which will test and report Internet traffic to their network, creating an active network of monitors.

Following their agreement with Verizon, many supporters of Google began questioning the search giant's motives, suspecting they may have cast their lot in the battle for Internet control.  Google, however, insisted their decision was purely a correction of an unfair FCC proposal, suggesting that the FCC's plan would prohibit their ability to prioritize more demanding modes of communication over another, such as video over voice.  Perhaps Google is, in fact, in favor of a free and open Internet despite their competitors motives, but it is also quite possible that this decision to assign Georgia Tech as Internet watchdogs is merely a stunt to regain favor.

This Machine Kills Fascists

 

                                                    This land was made for you and me.        

The more research I do on Net Neutrality, the more I come to realize how little people really know about it.  As someone often knee-deep in Internet culture, the issue of Net Neutrality seemed pervasive to me.  I've come to realize, at the risk of sounding excessively paranoid, that the lack of attention Net Neutrality has received is probably due to the telecommunications industries having such control over public discourse.  Granted, as it stands, service providers are not permitted to stifle, limit, or block any net traffic over another, but news organizations are another monster entirely.  NBC, now merged with Comcast, has a very new and very large stake in the failure of Net Neutrality, so as a result, it wouldn't be surprising to see much less coverage, if any at all.

As communication services like Twitter, Facebook, and Blogger literally revolutionize the way we spread news and information, power over the media is slowly being taken away from television networks and newspapers and handed back to the general public.  Telecoms realize that their only option for future survival is to grab the Internet by the tubes.  Social networking and blog sites are the best tools we have to defend the Internet, and freedom itself.

Right now, more than ever, it is imperative the word about Net Neutrality be spread.  The Internet, which has changed the world so dramatically in its short life so far, is not broken, and does not need fixed.  Don't let complacency and insatiable corporate greed dismantle the financial and political future of the United States in front of our very eyes.

Wired vs Wireless

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski

Right now, you're likely using a hardwired Internet connection to read this.  You may be on your laptop in your living room, but the WiFi broadcast from your home router is coming from a cable connected to it.  The majority of Internet connections in the US are provided this way, by physical wires on a very large and extensive grid.  Recently, however, the "Internet market" has been evolving rapidly into a more unbound, wireless market.  The exponential growth in popularity and availability of smart phones is largely responsible for this.

In their efforts to combat Net Neutrality and extend their control over the Internet, telecoms have taken into deep consideration the difference between "wired" and "wireless" in order to best exploit the distinction when dealing with the FCC.

As recently as December of 2010, the FCC made a pretty serious mistake for not paying better attention to this distinction.  Their most recently passed Net Neutrality proposal, which applies primarily to wired Internet traffic, only vaguely imposes rules on wireless services.  This proposal is still currently being debated and the FCC is scrambling to recover their bargaining chips while they face a torrent of descent from politicians and a very large lawsuit from Verizon.

As it stands now, the state of this proposal, if enacted, is a very serious threat to the future of the Internet.  As I've stressed before, the future of the Internet is wireless.  Telecoms are deviously taking advantage of the shortsightedness of the FCC and exploiting every dubious legal loophole they can find to secure their futures.  They know the future is wireless and could care less for wired priorities.  They convinced the FCC they had made compromising progress by accepting limitations on wired connections knowing full well they were safe from regulation.

Monsters in Your Living Room

As you can see from the video above, the Net Neutrality debate is nothing we haven't encountered before.  As you may be able to tell from the style of the video, the "paid" vs "free" tv debate was more an issue of the 70's, but remains in discussion today.  For the most part, the free vs paid debate was settled on ambiguous grounds, permitting providers the ability to charge customers for additional channels, but requiring they broadcast a handful a free basic channels to antennae and cable customers.  The PBS we know today was largely borne from this issue, but has recently found itself threatened by closure.

"Pay TV" has survived and flourished despite the prevalence of "free TV" by innovating and pacing with competitors.  Digital cable and satellite service providers are the most pervasive forms of pay TV, but recently, internet TV has stormed onto the market with Hulu and Netflix.  Digital cable, satellite television, and internet television are all innovations as a results of competition.  Once DirectTV began encroaching on the market majority with satellite television, Comcast, then AT&T, developed digital cable as a way of delivering hundreds of channels in order to compete.  

The kind of regulation enacted upon the television industry didn't stifle progress, it ensured it.  Net Neutrality, like free vs paid television, ensures that there is always room for a competitor, without penalizing market leaders.  Without Net Neutrality, Comcast could stifle, or even altogether block, internet access to the websites of companies which compete with any of the hundreds of products under the NBC-Comcast umbrella, resulting in a sort of monopoly.  Under Net Neutrality, however, Comcast, or any other Internet service provider, would be denied to the right to tamper with what data is sent and received on their networks, thus ensuring fair competition for companies.  We know this system would work, because it already has.  For example, NBC is owned by cable TV provider Comcast, but thanks to regulation, Comcast is forbidden from throttling or delaying any specific signals and NBC comes through as clear as any other network.  As a result, we have a varied and, often, engaging world of television, with some exceptions.

With the Flick of a Switch

The revolution in Egypt recently pushed the issue of Internet control into public debate.  As the population in Egypt began to organize and protest, the government, run by Hosni Mubarak, sought to stifle the massive uprising by eliminating the ability of the protesters to communicate and organize by disabling all Internet and cell phone service.  Almost simultaneously, the United States Congress reviewed a legislative proposal giving the president that very same control over US online activity.  The proposal was dismissed in December, but reintroduced in early February.

While the legislation may be, as suggested, an emergency control to shut down "the system that controls the floodgates at the Hoover Dam", it can not be ignored that this control would allow the government the ability to effectively disable the Internet the same way that Mubarak so recently did.  

In his article on the legislative push, PC Magazine writer John C. Dvorak, highlights how many supporters of the bill, such as Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins, know very little about the Internet and United States network infrastructure.  The Internet could never be attacked as a whole and the days of e-mail worms are over,  let alone the floodgates of the Hoover Dam opened from a remote location.  Misinformation is the battle being fought, and the greatest weapon against it is the Internet itself.

A Tip of the Cap

Recently, the Canadian Radio-Telecommunications Commission, the equivalent of our FCC, agreed on "Usage-Based Billing" for the company Bell Canada.  The drastic move reduced the monthly usage bandwidth from 200GB down to a mere 25GB per month.  The move was met with an appropriate eruption of resistance from the oft complacent Internet community.

Perhaps Bell Canada merely applied too much pressure in too short a time.  200GB - 25GB a month is a massive and alarming leap and was met with the outpour it warranted.  Comcast, however, seems to have a more accurate read on the temerity of its consumer base.  Rather than trying to slam a lid on alloted bandwidth, Comcast used some reasonable and devious foresight in their approach.  Knowing that with a delicate touch, and enough time for fervor to come and go, Comcast has implemented a somewhat reasonable usage cap and will charge those who will most certainly exceed it in the near future as the inevitable growth of data strains their bandwidth.

From Comcast.com:
"Your Comcast High-Speed Internet service has a monthly data usage allowance of 250 gigabytes (GB). If you are wondering whether you are at risk of exceeding this 250GB threshold, you should know that the vast majority - around 99% - of Comcast customers use significantly less than 250GB per month."


Certainly, a cap of 250GB will seem irrelevant to the typical Internet user when framed with statistics like "50 million plain text e-mails" and "25,000 songs", but when you consider things like high definition streaming video, online games, and entire families sharing that cap, the ceiling starts to look that much closer.  However, perhaps the most important thing to remember when considering the effects of metered Internet remains "growth".  With services like Netflix and Youtube expanding rapidly and the evolution of cleaner and clearer video and audio codecs, Comcast's 250GB cap will soon be an absurd limitation on Internet usage.

Look Familiar?

AOL and Friendster for free!

This image is merely speculation, but it is not difficult to imagine a future of packaged Internet subscriptions given that this is how television is already sold. However, a system of subscription for the internet would stifle the internet's freedom of information and interactivity, smother the future of legitimate journalism, and severely impact subscription services like Netflix, LexusNexus, and The New York Times, adding an additional ISP "subscription" on top of their own.

You may not even know it, but over the last few years your Internet subscription has already begun to tighten.  For example, recently in the US, Comcast has put into place a 250 Gigabyte (GB) per month "cap" on the bandwidth of its Internet subscribers.  Now, 250GB may sound like a reasonable ceiling for monthly usage, but this all depends on how you use your bandwidth.

Let's assume you love film and subscribe to the Netflix Instant Watch program, allowing you to stream movies and television shows to your PC.  Streaming Netflix in high definition uses approximately 2GB/hr, so if you watch an average of 10 2-hour films a month, you've already consumed 40GB of your 250GB limit.  Now let's assume you love video games.  The Steam service offered by Valve Software allows users to buy and download games directly from their servers.  The size of many of the games on Steam tend to fall around 10GB each.  Assuming you play 5 new games a month, you are eating 50GB of your 250GB limit.  Finally, let's assume you're very proud to gift these services to your nephews for Christmas in 2010.  If they use their services conservatively, they consume around 100GB of their family's 250GB cap.  Bandwidth caps are the Internet's equivalent of debit card overdraft fees, which were recently banned by the Federal Reserve, deceptively charging customers for unannounced and poorly outlined use violations.

However, despite all this, the greatest problem with Internet bandwidth caps is presented by the rapid growth of data.  Ten years ago, you likely would have had to Google "Terabyte" for any real scope of how much data a terabyte contained, but today, you might own a harddrive with a 3 or 4TB capacity.

Welcome

"[…] They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material."

- Senator Ted Stevens

You're doing it right now.  Look at you go.  You're using The Internet as it was intended to be used.  A sprawling, free, open network of computers, the Internet has likely allowed you and millions of others to learn things in minutes that would have taken hours or even days just twenty years ago.  Chances are good you've already checked your Facebook today.  You can even use a computer or mobile device to interface via live video with another Internet user anywhere else on Earth for as long as you like.  The Internet has allowed for the exponential growth curve of technology to take off and we are right on the bleeding edge.  It is an undeniably fascinating time to live.  Whether you realize it or not, you are tapping the free information of the Internet this very moment, but, unfortunately, some Internet service providers and government bodies seek to stifle that freedom and availability of information allowed us by the Internet.

Net Neutrality is a priciple, a policy, and a movement.  Since early 2000, Internet users and researchers have identified the potential for the Internet to go the way of radio and television and suffer heavy regulation.  In the coming weeks, I will be expanding upon and examining the current state of Net Neutrality and the freedom of The Internet.