Free Internet – A Human Right?
Free internet is something that has talked about by quite a few people, and something that we here at netBlazr are often enthralled by and represents one of our pie-in-the-sky, ultimate goals.
While there are many interesting questions and challenges in bringing free internet to all Americans, including the powerful forces at Verizon, AT&T, and others, some of which netBlazr has already encountered, I personally wonder about the premise of FreedomPop: is the internet really a human right? Is it up there with water, food, freedom from persecution, and the like?
The internet (IP) people have it wrong. Web 1.0 (aka the internet) was a legacy outgrowth of the breakup of AT&T. It’s layer 1-2 foundations (flat-rate dial-up pricing) were a result of a monopolistic response to a competitive WAN (metered) threat. The baby bells expanded LATAs and offered flat rate dialup to sell additional lines and keep AT&T, MCI and Sprint from breaking their 5E bottleneck. And they further have it wrong when they argue for bill and keep. There are four things wrong with bill and keep: 1) it keeps new entrants out; 2) it discourages/prevents new service creation; 3) it makes a centralized procurement process (800, VPN, etc..) impossible; and 4) it does not provide a mechanism to pay for and/or reward layer 1-3 investment by layer 7 service providers.