Once upon a time, there was the Internet

Comment (written testimony) submitted to NYC Council, Tech in Government Committee, Hearing on Net Neutrality, Nov 20, 2009

The Internet has been a tremendous transformational technology and democratizing force in its short 40 years. An open network platform, it enabled an economic revolution democratizing the opportunity to innovate and to create new companies. Computers gave us processing power, the Internet multiplied that with the power of networks.

Historically and by-design, network providers (carriers) provide access to the platform, but they do not control what users can access and what application and content providers are allowed to offer on the Internet platform. In other words users have the “freedom of access”. Innovation-communities, like Wikipedia, and companies, start-ups and established alike, have the “freedom to experiment and innovate” creating value through new services and new business models.

You, as a user, wouldn’t like your network provider choosing which search engine you will use, or which social network you will access. You wouldn’t like your network provider to choose which website will be accessible at low speeds and which at high speeds. You would not like to have something like-Internet access that is not really Internet access. You would not like to have a choice between connecting to AT&T-net or to Verizon-net, but not to the whole Internet as we know it.

You, as an entrepreneur and innovator, wouldn’t like the network providers choosing what customers you will have access to. You wouldn’t like the network providers choosing who the most innovative company is and who offers the best service. You wouldn’t like network providers to start experimenting with discrimination that “closes” the platform, establishes “gatekeepers”, distorts the economics of the network, and weakens incentives for economic innovation.

I absolutely stress the importance of establishing clear openness rules that will maintain the essential characteristics of the Internet as a platform for economic innovation, social interaction, cultural progress, civic engagement, education and freedom. We wouldn’t like to see the Internet becoming a short-lived historical accident.

Evangelos Katsamakas is an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at the Fordham University Schools of Business in New York. (Katsamakas@fordham.edu)

November 20, 2009