A blueprint for Internet investment

17.12.2008
President-elect Barack Obama has been clear that investment in infrastructure -- including Internet infrastructure -- will be one of his administration's signature initiatives. That's excellent news, because the Internet could surely use some focus and investment.

Here's hoping, though, that his team brings the same attention to detail to his Internet initiative that it's brought to the campaign, staffing and transition strategies -- because fixing the Internet isn't quite as simple as it looks.

First off, there's the definition of what exactly the problems are. In previous columns I've outlined two significant technical issues: the lack of bandwidth capacity at the edges (access lines), and the ongoing structural fragility due to inherent architectural flaws (particularly around naming and addressing).

Those are the technical concerns. But there are others having to do with policy and economics. For example, is Internet access a "right" or a "service"? What is net neutrality, and does it apply equally to carriers and content providers? What is a user's expectation of privacy, and does it apply equally to carriers and content providers? And finally, what is the definition of "broadband" services?

It's all very neat and simple, or so folks would have you believe. But I'm with noted curmudgeon HL Mencken on this one: "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." (There's a similar quote attributed to Einstein).

In previous columns, I covered some of the nuances around Internet access, net neutrality, and unequal perspectives on privacy (it's apparently OK for content providers, but not carriers, to spy on their customers -- hmm).