On this episode of Spark: Springboard, Metropath(ologies), and CRTC hearings
- Cristina Matei designs Springboard, a social network for public transit (Cristina’s collaborators were Amy Mamtura and Esther Hung)
- Nora and Elizabeth introduce a new contest: How many people are plugged in?
- Judith Donath explores information overload through Metropath(ologies) (full interview)
- Anil Dash unplugged for two weeks, and didn’t miss anything (more audio from Anil)
- Peter Nowak explains the current CRTC hearings
- Nora asks for your stories about aspic
This episode features Creative Commons music and sound effects:
- “Wadidyusay?” by Zap Mama
- “Second Thoughts” and “Liquid Jazz” by General Fuzz
- “Can I Talk to You” and “Elephants On Parade” by Podington Bear
- “Latin Nightbug” by Lee Rosevere from Backtime
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[Photo credit: MIT Museum]
Telecom/broacasting policy is exciting, and glad you are covering it. Who controls the means of production and distribution of knowledge in an emerging knowledge economy is critical.
It is something that Jesse also covers over at search engine. Sorry if this is long, but I wanted to add a few points to the discussion.
I don't think it can be said that it is ISPs vs everyone else. The companies opposed to maintaining a neutral network are not ISPs but legacy phone and cable companies that happen to be offering Internet access services because they manage existing wires into peoples homes. Companies that are Internet focused tend to be far closer to other Internet companies who support the end-to-end design of the Internet, and far away from the legacy phone and cable companies.
Fundamentally the problem is this: If we ever truly transition into a modern digital communications infrastructure there will be no roll for phone or cable companies. Their misinformation on this topic is simply a case of them fighting for their lives by trying to take mould "Internet" connections to be more like legacy phone or cable services.
We have thus far special cased telecommunications and cable services to be different than any other similar service. Our roads our neutral, and the provider of the roads (largely governments, but also private roads) do not deep-inspect the contents of our vehicles to see if what we are transporting competes with one of their unrelated additional services. We in Ontario even have electricity where the generation is separated from the distribution, allowing a competitive market in the generation while acknowledging that the "last mile" to our homes is a natural monopoly.
How would this work for a modern replacement of legacy phone and cable companies? You would have ultra high-speed digital connectivity within municipalities where the service is paid for like electricity: a rate based objectively on how much you use, and never subjectively on what you are using it for.
You would then connect over that generic digital pipe to services offered within your municipality. The CBC network would offer audio (what we previously called Radio), Video (what we previously called Television), as well as text (websites, etc). Other existing "broadcast" networks would offer similar services, which citizens could individually subscribe to. There would no longer be these imposed "bundles" which legacy cable companies like to impose.
This ties directly into the "Broadcast" hearings, where fee-for-carriage is what the television networks and stations are asking for. When all stations are paid for this way, and not just speciality stations, then consumers will not stand for these legacy bundles. There will be an even greater push to have competition in the cable market such that audiences will be able to make their own choices of what stations to subscribe to, rather than some executive in a legacy cable company. Moving to a modern digital network would solve this problem as well.
Other companies would offer inter-municipality and inter-country voice communications and directories (what we previously called phone service). Still other companies would offer pure data transit across large geographic regions (what we previously called Internet Service Providers). We would have a free market of competing services for what type of services would be offered, and there would be no anti-competitive control provided by the provider of the underlying utility that favoured any specific use of that generic data connection.
There was also a presumption that there was truth in the claim from the phone and cable companies that there is more usage of the networks and expensive upgrades needed to the network to handle this usage. This claim has never been backed up with actual evidence, and in fact the evidence that has been released suggests the opposite. Their claims are also fundamentally anti-competitive: In the case of Bell there wouldn't have been a case if they were only throttling their own customers rather than the customers of competing ISPs. The part of the network that may have congestion is the inter-country connections such as the submarine cables. This means that it is not the connections from our homes over legacy phone or cable wires that are legitimately congested, but wires past the ISPs. If congestion was the issue then each ISP would be allowed to be free to manage their own networks, rather than having the phone and cable companies mismanage the connections of competitors.
The other claim that is often made is this: That it is "their" wires and they should be free to do what they want. This claim has little merit. There are special right-of-way exceptions made to allow these wires to be placed above and below private and public property. If these companies had to negotiate with the property rights owners of this land and pay rent, this cost would far outweigh the values of these companies. It is only with these special government exceptions that these companies exist at all, and if they want to receive the benefits as if they owned these wires then they should be expected to be treated as private owners. The moment after this special access is revoked these companies would be filing for bankruptcy, and we would be able to properly manage these digital connections the way they should be: as a public utility.
I find it quite amusing that , a week after bemoaning the loss of solitude and introspection among today's youth, your lead story is all about a product (Springboard) that would help further undermine an individual's ability to cherish some solitude, even in the midst of the "madding crowds". Now, I'm sure some will find this application useful, but, really, is it so bad that some people want to just be left alone during their commute?
Ha, true! I did get some emails from people who say their commute is their private time, so they would definitely not want to use Springboard if it existed.
I don't think Springboard suggests that it's bad for people to want to be left alone, though. I think the concept design was meant to address a different problem, which is that in big, busy cities, people sometimes have trouble connecting with strangers.
Thanks for commenting!