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Opinion

Internet more than just a series of tubes

Matt Dulin
Opinion Columnist

It's like a toll road. No, it's like heavy trucks that pay more to use the roads. No, that's not it. It's just like sending a package through the mail -- you have to pay more to send a bigger package. No, wait: It's a series of tubes.

People have made many attempts in the last year to describe in layman's terms how the Internet works and also to explain how "net neutrality" is a good or bad idea based on what metaphor you happen to use. 

Oh, and despite what you've heard from those in favor of net neutrality, this is not a battle over free speech -- at least not yet. (It's curious to note that the big search-engine firms on the side of net neutrality -- Google and Yahoo -- openly permit censoring and blocking Internet content in China. Maybe that's the cost of doing business.) We don't need net neutrality to protect free speech -- we have a First Amendment to do that.

The metaphors that matter in the debate deal with commerce. Proponents of net neutrality seem to stick to the toll road analogy, which depicts all Internet traffic as a clogged freeway, not unlike Interstate 10 at rush hour, while cars in the toll lane created by big telecommunications companies roar by at Autobahn-like speeds. 

This toll road, of course, would only be accessible to a privileged class of Web companies that could afford its rates. Critics of net neutrality say the Internet is one giant highway where the size of the load determines who pays extra. 

An 18-wheeler, for instance, pays more in taxes and more at toll booths than regular automobiles. So a big file coming from a server to your home ought to cost a little more to get there, these people say.

We can expect these images to be replayed again soon as lame-duck legislators might try one last jab at either pushing net neutrality rules or granting telecommunications companies the right to set up tiered, pay-as-you-go Internet backbones.

The tiered-Internet camp, the arch-villain of those on the net neutrality side, argue that since they are investing in infrastructure to deliver high-bandwidth content (think full-screen, high-definition video downloaded in a matter of seconds, depending on your own connection), they ought to be able to charge content providers to use it. This of course flies in the face of what the Internet has been up until now: one level playing field. 

Companies that support this structure (AT&T, Verizon and most big telecommuncations companies) say the big companies calling for net neutrality (Google, Yahoo and eBay are the biggest) just want a "free ride" on their pipes and to make loads of dough off of users. 

It's a way of saying, well, Google is getting rich off the consumption of its service, so AT&T ought to get a slice of that business, since AT&T made it all possible.

And in all honesty, that's a fair, though perhaps unfriendly, business practice. But it would also render that part of the Internet private, making it less of a public good, such as telephone service and broadcast airwaves, and more of a, well, toll road.

Some consumers are against a tiered Internet. They want to have the most effective product or service at the best quality for the lowest cost possible. A tiered Internet means users will have to pay more. If content providers are charged more to transmit information, that cost is just going to be passed on to the user in the same way he or she pays shipping and handling when he or she orders something online or by telephone. 

If consumers want to download a movie in two minutes, they'd have to pay more than if they were to wait an hour instead. On top of that, users would already be paying $40 a month just to get that capability. Surely these big content providers will have to spend a great deal on their own infrastructure to deliver these feeds in the form of connections to the Internet backbone (more bandwidth) and data storage. There's nothing free about Internet commerce. 

The debate has come to a head recently because the technology is being developed to deliver these high-performance services, and the firms that want to cash in on tomorrow's capabilities are looking for the best posturing to do that. Phone companies are winning the battle in several states to allow them to distribute on-demand video services over their lines. This puts them in direct competition with cable companies without having to worry about getting the franchise rights that cable companies must vie for. 

In another generation, these squabbles over who pays for what will no doubt fall by the wayside, rendered moot by a new technology. 

What would that one look like? Another series of tubes, perhaps?

Dulin, a communication senior and managing editor of The Daily Cougar, 
can be reached via dccampus@mail.uh.edu