Hundt, Reed. Future of international broadband and practically everything else. April 7, 2010
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Hundt, Reed. Future of international broadband and practically everything else. April 7, 2010.
- rehundt //at// yahoo dot com
- HS classmate of Gore
- Working with Aronson, Aspen Inst. in "idea formation process" to revise "int'l broadband agenda"
- Presently raising money from foundations
- Pay for executive director and require meetings
- Goal for today, describe initial framing
- Seeking details, correction
- Leading q: "What the FCC has the authority to regulate (incl. content)?"
- Arrived to FCC at a time when it was in the interest of the govt to have universal mobile/wireless, internet/broadband
- "An extreme patriot on this topic"
- "Can't go into a gunfight with a stick of butter"
Contents |
Various strategies
JG
- Access to content
- Applications
- Services
- Devices
- "Plus" management and transparency
- Most important but what does it mean?
- Differentiation? According to...
- Content?
- Protocol?
- Geography?
- Kickbacks???
Treaty approach
"TDS CDMA --- totally different but the same CDMA"
- Form a treaty that imposes a legal structure
- If they want to do TDS, then we punish via legal structure
Alternative approach
- Allow differentiation, thus isolation?
Broadcast management regulation
- Mandating repair
- Maintaining service based on its "essential" nature
Broadband management?
- Could the FCC impose a requirement that broadband corps must repair?
Single-payer broadband?
Could broadband be a utility?
"For next 15 years, there will be 1 single broadband provider."
- FiOS is commercially "dead"
- WiMax is not politically viable
What is "provider"? What is "ISP"?
- In dialup, local ISP era, we had a la carte options
- Not everyone wanted USENET, IRC
- Where are the limits?
HRC in her Internet Freedom speech (1/21/10)
- FDR's "four freedoms":
- expression
- worship/associate
- protection from harm
- economic opportunity
- Plus "2Connect"
REHundt
Rights
- Learn from sources on the internet
- Promulgate, publish their material
- Associate, join communities
- Connect devices, networks
- Create anything they want online (excepting that which is "repugnant" to social norms")
Focus on rights dissimilar from the "management" discussion
- Management does not give individuals any "private rights of action"
- Common carrier regime means that individuals cannot sue AT&T ("you promised me service at 5pm and it was out")
Similarity to UN Article 19?
- Univ declaration of human rights
- http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
Corporate culture among the regulator, regulated? (Anti-trust)
FCC "loved it" when AT&T was a monopoly because it made regulation simpler
- AT&T "doesn't fight" because the accepted monopoly is "within their corporate interest"
- How does this create a tendency among the FCC?
Anti-trust under Bill Baxter (Reagan admin)
- Only person on the case who did not own AT&T stock
Management strategy implies a monopoly
Assumption of monopoly
- Otherwise, consumer choice would draw forth the repair needs from the market
- REH wrote this in 2006 in Fed Comm Law Journal
- Argued that broadband should be "common carrier"
- In 1994, they decided to auction spectrum to create a many-firm wireless market
- To eschew monopoly-based regulation
v China
- China has adopted management regulation at the point of content
- Is this an expression of "network neutrality"?
- Does the management principle involve content?
Andrew McLaughlin
- Buzz revealed that he is maintaining minute-by-minute contact US govt and Google
Can Google read yr email?
- Yes, to serve advertising
- Could future FCC regulation deny this?
- Can a telephone company?
- Legally no
- (except a few situations: Patriot Act, customer service/QA)
Problems of the net
No policy for this:
- Privacy (can't publish)
- Piracy (can't create)
- Coordinated distributed attacks (can't run)
- Transnational behavior (who is acting?)
Proposing laws that demand details
- Management, mandated repair
- But no law protecting emails?
Problem with agency governance
- "All the power" in agencies (like FCC)
- But not easily fit into either of the three branches
Privacy + market pressure
- Presently, Gmail is an exchange (privacy for service)
- But could there be private email service?
- What if it's very expensive?
- Quid-quo-pro: you can't have privacy if you can't pay for it
- Postal service and telephone service
- Can't open your mail, tap your lines
- Affordable and high-quality to 100%
Piracy
- Would FCC authority to regulate access to content empower the Commission to pass a different regulation?
- "Someone else might get the job" and he doesn't have the same morals
Who's minding the net?
- UN (ITU) : spectrum
- ICANN: domain name coord
- IEEE: standards
- WIPO: world intellectual property organization
- ACTA:
- IETP: tech, protocols
- WTO/telcom, ita: trade governance
- 1997
- One of very few WTO agreements that requires signatory countries to engage in domestic regulation
- They are req'd to adopt something that foreshadows net neutrality
- Not rights-based approach but a trade approach
- Norms
- Anarchy
- State control (cloud computing)
History, WSIS (2002-2005)
- 188 countries wanted to "modernize" according to a global commission on science and technology
- USA frustrated the process and is now caught
Are these institutions adequate?
- Unclear goals
- Definitely not shared goals
- Inequal development
- Lacking common intellectual framework
In TDS example?
- Do we need a global coordinating body?
Public goods; goods for harmonious society
Broadband plan, March 17
- Julius
- First integrated, total communication + media plan passed in the US
- UK is one of the only other countries that has done something
- Hundreds of recommendations
- 30% of the plan: "how to deliver HEEDS to 100% of population at near no cost?"
- Health care
- Energy management
- Education services
- Democracy's function
- Safety including first responders of all kinds
- HEEDS == e911
- Ultimately, to 7billion ppl
- Isn't this more powerful than the TDS/CDMA situations?
It's about content
- Discussion of "ecosystem" is based on "applications" rather than "networks"
- Divorce between these is not reflected in the broadband plan
Tactics
Extant FCC powers
- Consortiums
- Landing rights
- Peering
- Satellite coordination
- Cross border traffic
- Connected device permits
- e.g. they have legal authority to restrict distribution of HTC handsets because they infringe Apple IP
- Security
- International USF
- Universal service to other nations (e.g. Mexico)
- Reliability council
China (and other countries) believe that they have these powers.
What to do?
- Re-write 1997 Telcom Treaty, WTO
- Find-replace "voice", "data"?
- ICANN Plus
- Not just domains but protocols
- Internet Governance Forum
- Craft Mutual Assistance Pact
- Firms should agree on collective response to attacks
- Shared def of what constitutes attack
- Security threat is so high that it enables saber-rattling
- CMAP is a threat to Russia because so many bots originate there
- China action overwhelmingly threatens the internet as we know it in the US
- Should be about data and data freedoms
JPBarlow, Declaration...
- Anarchy is an acceptable answer
- No need for governing institutions
Open questions
Is tech enough?
- Will the ship right itself with a well-designed sufficient keel?
- Cloud computing forecloses this possibility
Might social networks provide an answer?
- Operating effectively "like states"
- Stateless org providing its own norms
- Forecloses the rights-based approach
Role of trust?
- Vint Cerf, Bob Kahn
- They could act according to trust
China developing infrastructure in Africa
- Using the wrong fiber in Nigeria?
