The Right Question: What Should We Do, Internationally, for the Billions Not Online

Imagine how much more effective the U.S. lobbying at the ITU would be if we had a concrete plan for connecting the 4 billion people without broadband.
Marc Cooper at the Columbia CITI event confronted the nay-sayers who believe ITU and WCIT essentially shouldn’t do anything. We all know getting governments involved can muck things up, but is doing nothing a viable alternative?

“We hear about this incredibly successful space. Last century, the PSTN was a complete disaster for 80% of the people on this planet. 84% of the people on this planet do not have broadband. They have been left behind. They don’t want to regulate the Internet. They want to participate. The economics won’t get to these people in the timeframe they want. What are we going to do with it in the international space?” Marc, a tireless advocate, startled me with this. It’s so obvious, but hasn’t been part of the discussion.

Should we have a Marshall Plan or Kennedy-style Alliance for Progress? Instead of saying what not to do, can we demonstrate some American ideas that could really make a difference? Can corporations like AT&T and Google taking such strong positions “against” find positive contributions they can make?

Ambassador Terry Kramer currently is Dr. No, shooting down the substance of the ITU advances. That puts him in a dark corner of “non-negotiable” demands. NTIA Director Strickling’s comment “We will not accept,” is dangerous. Does the U.S. want to cut itself off from an International consensus on the Internet?

Here’s some ideas:

Read more ...

Terry KramerChange is not good. Terry Kramer is too nice a guy to call "Dr. No," but that was my earlier headline after listening to his press call and reading his speeches. With the exception of more power to the companies in rate negotiations, the U.S. positions amount to "no substantive change." 

    The U.S. is going to WCIT with "non-negotiable demands," ensuring a difficult negotiation.  ITU SG Touré repeated at Columbia September 23 his intent to decide everything by consensus, virtually giving the U.S. a veto. Touré and a large majority of the delegates believe improvements can be made, that we are not "in the best of all possible worlds." The tension is intense at every meeting. 

    In his own words, here's the positions of Ambassador Kramer. He has five key principles:

  • Minimal changes to the preamble of the ITRs;
  • Alignment of the definitions in the ITRs with those in the ITU Constitution and Convention, including no change to the definitions of telecommunications and international telecommunications service;
  • Maintaining the voluntary nature of compliance with ITU-T Recommendations;
  • Continuing to apply the ITRs only to recognized operating agencies or RoAs; i.e., the ITRs' scope should not be expanded to address other operating agencies that are not involved in the provision of authorized or licensed international telecommunications services to the public; and
  • Revisions of Article 6 to affirm the role played by market competition and commercially negotiated agreements for exchanging international telecommunication traffic.

and here's the full speech, as prepared to deliver to the SAMENA event.

Read more ...

Who to ask: Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, ETNO, ITU and anyone who claims that video requires expensive QOS networks.

Accurate answer: Almost never on major wired networks. Best efforts telco networks are generally designed to rarely go over 80% of capacity, per Bell Canada to CRTC. Cablecos may suffer a little more from congestion, but Jason Livingood of Comcast says that even in the worst congestion, speeds don't go down more than a third. Bandwidth isn't free, but it's cheap enough to have plenty of bandwidth for all but Katrina or 9/11 sized emergencies. The results on wireless is less clear, but generally there is far less congestion than the press reports suggest.

Why it matters: The Euro big telcos are spending millions to lobby for the "Google tax," a charge on all video going over the net. They claim that's necessary because they need to spend billions to upgrade their networks. They want Daily Motion, Google, Amazon and Netflix to pay for special "Quality of Service" delivery. That's b___. Even HD video can look great at 3 megabits and below, with the new H.265/HEVC about to halve that. Video comes across fine on any reasonable "best efforts" network.

      The Euro telcos, working through their ETNO trade association, are repeating everywhere the false claim their networks suck and can't carry video. Video traffic is growing at a rapid rate, but the total cost of bandwidth at major carriers is flat to down. The gear needed - primarily switches and routers - is becoming rapidly cheaper because of Moore's Law. People who don't understand networks are often persuaded telcos need more money because traffic is growing, but everyone informed knows that's not so. Politicians like Neelie Kroes and the folks at ITU make sympathetic noises but I believe actually know the argument is unsupportable.

     The big telcos have major profit problems. Telefonica and France Telecom have had to cut dividends and Merrill Lynch has called on Deutsche Telekom to do the same. Telefonica has even cut top executive salaries. Landline voice, once among the most profitable products in the world, is in inexorable decline. For most of the last decade, broadband growth compensated. But broadband is near saturation so has little room for growth. So they want to tax the Internet to keep dividends and the stock price up.

Common sense confirmation: 22M Netflix users can easily watch HD. On Jennie's 3 megabit Verizon DSL, The Tudors looks great in on a 50" TV. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself. Buffering artifacts are very rare, and most problems turn out to be the home wireless connection, not the broadband line. 

Common sense confirmation #2: Nowhere in the warld has any broadband carrier found it profitable to offer a QOS enabled offering for consumer broadband. No one wants or needs it. 

Despite government doubts, Touré looking to open. Credible rumors are that several countries will release all the WCIT documents even if the ITU Council refused to do so.  This is a smart move to defang opposition to the WCIT treaty, coming in force from both right and left in the United States. Opposing a powerful treaty being conceived behind closed doors is easy for anyone. It will be far harder to rally support against the actual provisions, nearly all of which are cloaked in obscure diplomatic language. Most will be so abstract no one can be sure what they mean or why to oppose them. Few will read all the documents because they are incredibly boring.

    Sarah Parkes of ITU emailed me “all Member States are free to publish any documents they see fit as part of their national consultation process.” Emphasis in the original. She added “all ITU members have always been free to share any of the WCIT docs as part of their own consultation process, entirely as they see fit." more, including the ITU release 

The world needs a good news source on Internet and telecom policy. I hope to create one. Catch a mistake? Email me please.  Dave Burstein

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Professor Noam's "Many Internets" http://bit.ly/ManyNets

Until about 2010, everyone agreed the Net was a "network of networks," not a monolithic entity. There was a central authority, ICANN, keeping track of domain names, but that was a minor administrative function.
Columbia Professor Noam suggests we might be better off accepting that some nations or groups might want to organize their networks differently. It's easy to see demand for an Internet with much more effective filters against material some think harmful to children. (Any 10 year old can easily find porn today. Many do.)
Internet translation is getting better very quickly. You might want an "Internet" that translates everything into your language. Google Chrome translation isn't perfect but I was able to research most of this story on Russian language sites. With a few more years progress, I might welcome an alternate that brings me everything in English, including caching for better performance.
De facto, Internet news is already split, as hundreds of millions only get their news from Facebook. Google AMP pages, including for news, also favor selected parts of the net
Centralizing the DNS doesn't prevent censorship, as the Chinese have demonstrated. There are many Jewish and Muslim fundamentalists who want to block what they consider blasphemy and limit free speech. See http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/nyregion/ultra-orthodox-jews-hold-rally-on-internet-at-citi-field.html . More from Noam http://bit.ly/ManyNets

Russia Orders Alternate Root Internet System http://bit.ly/RussiaDNS
It's actually practical and not necessarily a problem.The Security Council of the Russian Federation, headed by Vladimir Putin, has ordered the "government to develop an independent internet infrastructure for BRICS nations, which would continue to work in the event of global internet malfunctions ... This system would be used by countries of the BRICS bloc – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa." RT
Columbia University Professor Eli Noam and then ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé have both said such a system is perfectly practical as long as there is robust interconnection.
Actually, the battle over ICANN and domain names is essentially symbolic. Managing the DNS is a relatively insignificant task, more clerical than governing. ICANN Chair Steve Crocker pointed out they had very little to do with policy.
Some will claim this is about blocking free speech but that's rhetoric. Russia doesn't need to fiddle with the DNS for censorship, as the Chinese have demonstrated. The wonders of the Internet will continue so long as the resulting nets" are robustly connected. The ICANN and U.S. policy goal should be to help create that system for interconnection.
I expect contentions that “The Russians are taking over our Internet” and “They are splitting the Internet.” The Internet is a “Network of Networks.” It is not a monolith so what would “splitting” it mean or do?
After the WCIT, China realized that ICANN and the DNS are side issues not worth bothering about. They have been building alternate institutions including the World Internet Summit in Wuzhan and the BRICs conferences.  The Chinese have put their main work where decisions that matter are made. Wireless standards are set by 3GPP, where nothing can be approved without China's consent.
The American battle at ITU is proving to be a historic mistake.
Why does Russia want an independent Internet?
They fear that Western sanctions on Russia could cripple the Russian Net. Communications minister, Nikolay Nikiforov, worries about, "a scenario where our esteemed partners would suddenly decide to disconnect us from the internet." I think that's highly unlikely but Nikiforov points out, “Recently, Russia is being addressed in a language of unilateral sanctions: first, our credit cards are being cut off; then the European Parliament says that they’ll disconnect us from SWIFT."
It makes sense for the Russians to be prepared for such a contingency as the Cold War has been warming up on both sides. "Britain's top military chief Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach just made headlines warning Russian subs "could CRIPPLE Britain by cutting undefended undersea internet cables." Much more http://bit.ly/RussiaDNS

ICANN Continues Excluding Russia & China From the Board http://bit.ly/CEOPromises
No wonder Russia wants an alternate root. Three years ago, ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé promised "a seat at the table" to Chinese Premier Li. ICANN welched and this year added two more Americans.
Almost all the ICANN board is from the U.S. and close allies; only about 4 of the 18 board members are from countries on the other side of the North/South divide in Internet policy.  Claiming ICANN represents the Global Internet is inappropriate. China is 1/3rd of the Internet but has no representation on the board.
I know many of the board members. They are all basically honorable but generally share a strong opinion on North-South issues.
Larry Strickling of the U.S. government knew just what he was doing with the IANA transition. He handed over to a board with similar positions as the U.S. government.
"The system is unsustainable while it excludes half the world," I have been saying since 2012. More, including the transcript of Fadi's statements,http://bit.ly/CEOPromises

Sorry, Ajit Pai: Smaller Telcos Did Not Reduce Investment After NN Ruling http://bit.ly/SorryPai
Pai justifies his NN choice with the claim, "The impact has been particularly serious for smaller Internet service providers." #wrong (Actually, NN has minimal effects on investment, up or down, I’m convinced. Competition, new technology, customer demand and similar are far more important.)
The two largest suppliers to “smaller ISPs” saw sales go up. Adtran's sales the most recent nine months were $540M, up from $473M the year before. 2016 was $636M, 2015 $600M. Calix the last nine months sold $372M, up from $327M. The full year 2016 was $459M, up from $407M in 2015. Clearfield, a supplier of fiber optic gear, was up 8% in sales in the smaller ISPs.
There is nothing in the data from others that suggests an alternate trend. Anyone could have found this data in a few minutes from the company quarterly reports.
The results in larger companies are ambiguous. I can "prove" capex went up or went down by selecting the right data. The four largest companies' capex - two/thirds of the total - went up from $52.7B in 2015 to $55.7B in 2016. The result remains positive after making sensible adjustments for mergers and acquisitions. That's as close to "proving" that NN led to increased spending as the facts chosen to prove the opposite.
Actually, whether capex went up or down in 2016 tells us almost nothing about the choice on neutrality. Everyone knows a single datapoint could be random or due to other causes. Much more, including the source of the errors http://bit.ly/SorryPai

Elders Bearing Witness: Vint, Timbl, & Many More http://bit.ly/VintTim
Vint Cerf, Tim Berners-Lee, Steve Wozniak and more than a dozen true Internet pioneers wrote Congress to protect Neutrality. The best Congress money can buy didn't listen but I wanted to reproduce their letter.
I hope they are wrong believing "is an imminent threat to the Internet we worked so hard to create." My take is the impact will be moderate in the short run.
From the letter:
We are the pioneers and technologists who created and now operate the Internet, and some of the innovators and business people who, like many others, depend on it for our livelihood. ... The FCC’s proposed Order is based on a flawed and factually inaccurate understanding of Internet technology. These flaws and inaccuracies were documented in detail in a 43-page-long joint comment signed by over 200 of the most prominent Internet pioneers and engineers and submitted to the FCC on July 17, 2017.
Despite this comment, the FCC did not correct its misunderstandings, but instead premised the proposed Order on the very technical flaws the comment explained. The technically-incorrect proposed Order ... More, including the full list, http://bit.ly/VintTim

 

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