A baby two-toed sloth (Choloepus) eats fruit at the Aiunau Foundation in Caldas, some 25 km south of... [+]
The Federal Communications Commission is living up to its reputation. A longstanding critique of the agency is that it moves far too slowly for the digital economy it regulates. Few things, it must be said, do move at the pace of digital advance. Yet on one current policy matter the
The Internet is quickly replacing the old telephone network. This is not a revelation. It’s been happening for two decades, at least. The rules that govern our communications networks, however, aren’t keeping up. Lots of regulations require us to keep investing in obsolescing telephone networks -- to the detriment of broadband networks.
Hoping to speed the transition to more modern rules, a number of communications providers have asked the FCC to conduct closely monitored trials that would demonstrate how newer technologies based on IP -- routers, switches, fiber, wireless, and software -- might replace the old copper voice network. The idea is that the network experiments would prove the feasibility (and also expose any complications) of an all-IP world and encourage modernization of communications regulation.
Who could oppose such a pragmatic, no-down-side proposition? The FCC, it turns out. In a new Public Notice responding the the communications firms’ request, the FCC said it was considering a few narrowly focused trials on services like voice-over-IP and 911 emergency systems. The agency did not take the advice of its own former National Broadband Plan author Blair Levin, who, when asked what the FCC should do with the proposal, recommended the agency “Grant it today.” Instead of acting, the FCC called for more rounds of public comments.
The Internet is altering the communications landscape even faster than most imagined. In the last two decades, U.S. Internet and IP traffic has grown to some 20 exabytes per month from just 10 terabytes per month – a two-millionfold increase. Traffic continues to grow around 50 percent per year. In the last four and a half years, the the number of mobile app downloads has exploded, from essentially zero in early 2008 to a cumulative total of more than 70 billion by year-end 2012. In 2013, we’ll download an additional 70 billion additional apps.
The topology of our networks is shifting, too. Data and apps are increasingly delivered by a growing and diverse set of firms and platforms – although over a basically standardized IP base layer. At the same time, the old voice network is being used less and less every day. These dramatic changes – the divergence of providers, platforms, services, content, and apps, and the convergence on IP – suggest policy must also change to support continued investment and innovation.
Communications firms have invested more than $1 trillion in broadband networks over the last 15 years. And although most Americans no longer use the phone network, the network firms are still required to invest billions each year in telephone technology. Why, when the FCC’s own National Broadband Plan called for this transition, does the agency loiter?
Technology analyst Larry Downes thinks he knows:
The continued hesitation over IP transition suggests a more disturbing motivation. Federal and state regulators are clearly anxious about their own role in a future all-IP world -- more concerned, it seems, than they are about the consumers they are pledged to protect.
That's because IP-based telephone service, including VoIP, is largely unregulated. And today, there are dozens if not hundreds of VoIP competitors, many offering their services for free.
Rivalry among IP voice providers, it seems, has done a far better job of disciplining the providers and encouraging competition than have the thousands of yellowing pages of detailed rules that still apply to the remaining wireline providers. The lightly regulated VoIP market seems to be working well, despite the absence of oversight.
Many would question whether we even need the IP trials. Aren’t the trials themselves an unnecessarily cautious undertaking? But to insist on more study about whether we conduct, at some future date, a set of limited trials, which might tell us the Internet may not be a fad and may be here for a while -- well, that is bordering on paralysis.
This is the regulatory triumph of phone over iPhone, of plain-paper fax over JavaScript and Ajax. In a fiberspeed world, the FCC is moving at the speed of copper.
