Re: Techdirt: Net Neutrality Debate Again Descends Into Shouting, Farce

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

If one reads the Register article, it says exactly what the subject  
line says. It descended into shouting and it is not at all clear it  
was the USG person started it. djf

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger () ibd com>
Date: June 23, 2007 6:41:25 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Cc: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Subject: Re: [IP] Techdirt: Net Neutrality Debate Again Descends Into  
Shouting, Farce

This so called "par-for-the-course " synopsis has a completely  
different spin of the event from one of the articles it is supposidly  
quoting from.

The first article makes it clear that it was the government man that  
went nuclear and the second article called it a great discussion.

I presume that some of the folks on this mailing list was there, so  
it will be interesting to hear their take on what happened.

And I have to point out that the saying that opening  700 Mhz creates  
a competitive marketplace with Cable and Telco's is complete bunk.  
700 Mhz is going to give a max of 100Mhz (and probably less) to be  
shared across a whole metro area. Fiber / wired links can offer  
Gigahertz of ether non-shared or minimally shared bandwidth. There is  
no comparison. And if things go the way the Bush admin is moving,  
that 700 Mhz will be owned by an oligopolist anyway.

Here is the first article followed by the second article:

Bush official goes nuclear in Net Neut row

Shouting match with delegates

By Gavin Clarke in San Francisco
Published Friday 22nd June 2007 01:00 GMT
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/22/bush_government_net_neutrality/

Supernova 2007 A San Francisco tech show degenerated into a shouting  
match today, after a pugnacious Bush commerce official squared off  
with heated supporters of net neutrality.

John Kneuer, the assistant secretary for communications and  
information, quickly lost his temper and began shouting back at  
Supernova 2007 attendees after taking flack for saying the free  
market - not government intervention - would protect internet  
innovation and access.

Taking a brief time out from shouting his responses at delegates  
who'd rejected his claims the free market has ensured consumer choice  
in US broadband internet access, Kneuer remarked in an aside: "I  
started out very politely."
That came seconds after he told delegates what they really wanted was  
for the government to mandate terms and conditions of internet  
service in the US.

"That's absolutely what you are asking for!" he shouted to counter- 
shots of "no!" and "there is no market place!", referring to the fact  
a handful of phone and cable companies control the lion share of  
broadband internet access and service in the US.

Increasingly, it seems, those companies will be allowed by the  
Government to charge for different levels of internet service -  
ending net neutrality.

Kneuer, who previously served with a Washington DC law firm  
representing telecoms companies, had fueled the crowd's anger during  
a short Supernova presentation.

Identifying delegates as "application providers", he said it was  
their responsibility to compete with broadband incumbents by offering  
their own service, founded initially on portions of the 700Mhz  
spectrum. This spectrum will be sold under auction once terrestrial  
TV providers complete their move to digital in February 2009.

He ruled out government action on net neutrality, with measures such  
as safeguarding packet prioritization and quality of service. "The  
end state of that is innovation in the regulator space outstrips the  
innovation in the application space," Kneuer said.

"The challenge is for the right application company to play in the  
access layer... this is a green field opportunity to have a radically  
different market participant to bring concepts of open access. If  
there is a pro consumer benefit to open access and if consumers need  
and want that, the carrier that brings that to consumers will have a  
powerful need and advantage and bring competitive pressures on other  
access layer providers.
"I firmly believe market forces are going to provide even more open  
networks and access much, much, much better than I can do as a  
regulator," he said.

The Bush administration, meanwhile, was challenged to donate a  
portion of the spectrum to academic institutions for research  
purposes. Speaking after Kneuer, a researcher for Cooperative  
Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) expressed frustration  
that there's currently no reliable way to gather independent data on  
the internet.

Researchers are instead forced to rely on vendor figures or are  
refused information on the grounds of privacy or the law, principal  
investigator KC Claffy said.

"We need numbers on spam, but where do you get numbers on spam from -  
anti-spam vendors. These aren't the people you want to be getting  
numbers from when setting policy," she said. "Let's look at what a  
public network is really used for. We cannot answer that. And the  
carriers are about to ask us to pay for traffic, 99 per cent of which  
is spam! If the Commerce Department really wants to help us they will  
provide the research community with a really open network we can all  
study."


And then the other article mentioned by the synopsis is COMPLETELY  
different than the take of the so called "par-for-the-course " synopsis:

[supernova] Bush admin guy, and then some great discussions
David Weinberger
http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/ 
supernova_bush_admin_guy_and_t.html
John M.R. Kneuer Acting Assistant Secretary Communications and  
Information gives a talk. He begins by talking about the value of the  
700mH spectrum. It's becoming available as "leapfrog" technologies  
are becoming available, he says. "What we really have is an  
opportunity for a game-changing opportunity against the first movers  
and incumbents." [I think I garbled that, but so did he.]

"Net neutrality sounds very open, but it rapidly comes down to the  
government setting rate terms and rules for access." "I firmly  
believe that market forces are going to provide an open network much  
much better than what we would get" through regulation. He refers to  
our current "great success."

I ask the first question. I say something like: The great success has  
us at #19 in broadband access because there is no open market. I  
wonder what great innovation is going to come from the incumbents. We  
have proof that it doesn't work because we've been trying it for  
about a decade [depending on how you count]. He says we're asking for  
the government to set rates. I ask if anyone in this audience is  
asking for that.

Doc points out that wifi has succeeded because the spectrum was left  
open, not auctioned.

David Isenberg says that wifi wasn't auctioned, and isn't owned by a  
carrier, yet most people in this room agree that wifi is the most  
innovative sector in the entire spectrum. Kneuer agrees. David says  
there's no business model, no carrier, and no market.

Kneuer: Wifi is local access to get to an underlying access. It  
doesn't lend itself to building out broad networks.

David I: Same for last mile for fiber, DSL...these aren't networks  
either. So they should be treated the same way...

K: They are nodes of a DSL network, etc. If I want to build out a 5mH  
wifi cloud, you won't be able to scale it. Wifi's authoriziation was  
for local area networks. It does not lend itself to the competing  
interests that need to be resolved in an efficient way. When you have  
lots of people trying to enter a commercial space and the gov't is  
the bottleneck, the best way to handle it is in a transparent way by  
letting people bid for it.

KC Claffy from CAIDA kicks butt explaining how much bogus information  
there is — stats supporting the interests of the incumbents, based on  
bad research, without review or transparency. Fantastic presentation,  
but too fast for me to blog.



On Jun 23, 2007, at 12:43 PM, David Farber wrote:

> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070622/093628.shtml
>
>
>
> from the par-for-the-course dept
> Net neutrality is a complex issue, but as tends to happen with most  
> things these days, it gets boiled down into easily consumable,  
> though not wholly accurate, ideological soundbites from both sides.  
> And even when people try to have an open, even-keeled discourse  
> about the issue, they still run into problems explaining things  
> well. For the most part, debate on net neutrality has glossed over  
> the fundamental, but perhaps less incendiary issues, and been  
> characterized by intellectual dishonesty and propagandizing from  
> activist groups on both sides. It was hardly surprising, then, to  
> read about a panel at the Supernova conference descending into a  
> shouting match between a Commerce Department official (ie the "anti- 
> regulation" guy) and "pro-net neutrality" supporters in the  
> audience. Really, it's an apt characterization of the whole debate:  
> a bunch of yelling, very little exchange of useful information, and  
> nobody really moves from their previously established ideology. All  
> this means is that, in the end, it's very unlikely for the right,  
> or even a good, solution to emerge. Instead, it will just come down  
> to whichever side can muster the most political clout -- which is  
> pretty much how things have gone in telecom regulation anyway
> Archives

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Robert J. Berger - Internet Bandwidth Development, LLC.
Voice: 408-882-4755 eFax: +1-408-490-2868
http://www.ibd.com




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