>The key to the growth of the Internet is that ISPs were given nearly free
>access to the local phone networks. The Baby Bells build the phone
>networks and ISPs get essentially a free ride in reaching customers, due
>to regulation that has been rigorously and consciously enforced the
>federal regulators to help build the Internet. Not only is a call to an
>Internet Service Provider just as cheap as any other local phone call,
>typical users of the Internet are online far, far longer than the typical
>phone call- so Internet users, disproportionately upper income, get
>subsidized by the general customers of local phone service for those
>calls.
This is what the local telcos say, but it does not hold water. In first place, the fact that Internet users are in upper income brackets is totally irrelevant: telephony is a business, not a form of social work. Besides, jacking up the costs of Internet would price it further out of reach of the less wealthy, keeping them in a cultural ghetto that would perpetuate their disadvantage. Secondly, the duration of the calls is not matter for discrimination: if they feel that long calls are unprofitable, the local telcos should switch to metered service - if they can get away with that. In some place they do. Third: even if the local telephone network could be considered public infrastructure (which is not) accusing ISP's of getting a free ride on it is like saying that, say, shopowners abuse the existence of the roads to build up their business. And finally, the thesis that local phone service is a "natural monopoly" and therefore needs to be regulated is made less and less realistic by the new technologies (wireless, broadband over cable, even data over power lines - see e.g. http://www.nortel.com/powerline/product.htm )
>In a normal, unregulated market, the Baby Bells would be charging ISPs
>tremendously higher rates for access. So ISPs have spent a lot of time
>lobbying the FCC to keep the regulations in place.
No, they wouldn't: in an unregulated market there would be no monopoly.
>Whether we are talking about UNIX, most computer languages, most Open
>Source software, or the Internet, they are all products of government
>spending and government regulation. Remember, most of Linux was created
>by programmers on the government dole, including Linus himself who was
>generously supported at his Finland university.
I'm not sure his university paid him so "generously" :-) But anyway, very few (if any) of the developers were paif _for writing Linux_. And many universities are not government-owned at all.
>What the Left should recognize and trumpet loudly is the success of the
>Internet as a product of government planning, government spending, and
>government regulation.
All of those are of questionable importance, but none more than "planning". The best thing in government's actions has been throwing money at the projects, no questions asked. Which, of course, raises the question whether it shouldn't have collected it in first place...
Cheers --
Enzo
P.S. Again on regulation and costs: try to compare the price structure of Internet communications with the tightly managed, highly regulated world of X.25 data networks (that, for technical reasons related to the network protocols, do not lend themselves to open, multiple-sourced access provision; and in many countries are handled by local PTT's on a monopolistic basis). About six years ago I ran a back-of-the-envelope calculation for the cost of transmitting data files from Hong Kong to Canada. Using the X.25 infrastructure vas going to cost 30 (thirty) times _more_ than placing a direct transoceanic IDD call! And those were times when IDD in Hong Kong cost about three times more than now, thanks to the colonial monopoly kindly offered to Cable & Wireless / HK Telecom. Well, we all know what sending data over the Internet costs to the users...