Sort of Evil
July 18, 2007; Page A14
Bless Ed Markey, the House telecom subcommittee chairman, but it didn't enter his head unaided to hold up an iPhone at a hearing last week and -- like the ape in the movie "2001" -- ponder why he shouldn't use it with any wireless network he wants rather than just AT&T's.
He was inspired by an alien epiphany (though he did not throw the iPhone in the air). Under brain stimulation from Jupiter, the movie ape noticed that a bone could be used to club a fellow ape. Under brain stimulation from the Google lobby, Mr. Markey noticed a club with which to bash the wireless industry into changing its business model and adopting one that better suits Google.
What Google and allied special interests want from their pet apes is slightly more intelligible than "2001's" notoriously psychedelic ending -- they want cellular operators to package and sell access to their networks the way landline broadband operators do.
You're saying to yourself, haven't Google and friends been gnashing their teeth over the landline practices of the Verizons and Comcasts, demanding "net neutrality" regulations to be erected against crimes to be named later? Yes, and without much success. Consider a recent Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute study that found that imposing Google's idea of "net neutrality" (i.e., restricting a network operator's ability to prioritize urgent and non-urgent data) would end up cutting a network's peak capacity in half.
Now Google and friends are turning to wireless, which they hope will prove a softer target. Here operators traditionally have built networks for the restricted purpose of letting customers make voice calls with an operator-supplied cellphone. But most operators have also started rolling out all-purpose broadband on their wireless networks, albeit high-priced and painfully slow (evidence of their need to ration capacity carefully to protect higher-priority voice traffic).
Verizon offers BroadbandAccess, a service that allows a customer, with a laptop card, to use Verizon's wireless network for Web surfing. AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint offer similar services. Likewise, Sprint and Clearwire are building out a new kind of wireless network, WiMax, for truly fast mobile broadband.
That's not good enough for Google and its allies, who want the government to require wireless operators to provide unrestricted Web surfing to buyers of basic phone plans. Don't be misled by the "net neutrality" and "open access" masquerades. This is nothing but business-model chauvinism, aided not a little by the mental clottedness of regulators, who evidently can be led to believe that any network operating on digital principles must be packaged and sold to customers in only one way.
Google has apparently convinced FCC Chairman Kevin Martin to go along with at least some restrictions on buyers at a forthcoming federal spectrum auction. Meanwhile, its ally Skype, eBay's voice calling affiliate, has petitioned for revival of the 1968 "Carterfone" policy, which stopped the old Ma Bell monopoly from deciding which phones and other devices subscribers could use on its network.
Why bother -- except to tilt the playing field at a crucial moment in wireless's development to please one very deep-pocketed company? Even Andrew McLaughlin, Google's senior policy counsel, recently acknowledged that discrimination is a red herring in the long run. Under the lash of customer demand, network operators will inexorably be driven to provide wide-open, ubiquitous broadband. "Net neutrality," he said, is only necessary in some ill-defined meantime.
Translation: Google wants the business models of wireless and wired broadband suppliers adjusted to serve Google's interests now, because -- well, because, there's a regulatory club lying at hand. The money Google spends on lobbying, after all, is pennies to the billions it invests in server farms and software. Yet the payoff is potentially sizeable. Google's aim is nothing less than making sure its dominance in the wired world is carried over into the emerging wireless marketplace.
Make no mistake: Google understands that restricting a wireless operator's ability to design its own business model can, by definition, only reduce its incentive to invest. But Google has bigger fish to fry. It wants to make sure it can continue to free-ride on your broadband subscription bills, even in the mobile world. It wants to make sure it won't have to share the proceeds of its massive search and advertising dominance with suppliers of network capacity.
Most of all, it wants to replicate in mobile search and advertising the overpowering position it has achieved in the fixed broadband world -- something that might not be possible if wireless operators are left any opportunity to carve out a business model other than as simply suppliers of the proverbial "dumb pipe."
Let's also float a suspicion that by relentlessly pitching broadband suppliers as an "enemy" industry ripe for regulation, Google hopes to forestall the day when Washington begins to examine Google's own dominance in search and advertising. Here, we can hardly blame the company. Its ability to control which Web sites and Web businesses receive traffic makes it a far likelier candidate for "public utility" treatment than the diverse and growing array of players who make up the broadband world.
Mr. Jenkins edits "Political Diary," the editorial page's daily email newsletter with commentary, analysis and gossip on Washington, D.C. and state politics. With John Fund. Subscribe at
http://www.politicaldiary.com.
"I used to be on an endless run.
Believe in miracles 'cause I'm one.
I have been blessed with the power to survive.
After all these years I'm still alive."
Joey Ramone, em uma das minhas músicas favoritas ("I Believe in Miracles")