The Internet should be like
electricity when it comes to consumption of its services: simple, safe, reliable, ubiquitous,
inexpensive and standardized. After
all, the Internet, like electricity, is
a commodity and should be treated as such by service providers, the government
and consumers. This is the logical
progression for this technology, given its role and prevalence in our society
and economy.
Let me first tackle the premise that
the Internet is a commodity. Once upon a
time, the Internet, like electricity, belonged to the realm of science. The observance, manipulation and utilization
of it was limited to scientific researchers who were studying its capabilities
and potential. But unlike electricity,
which is a naturally occurring phenomena, the Internet was man-made. Scientists had to consider the properties of
electricity and devise potential uses for those properties. In contrast, from the very beginning, the
Internet was conceived as a tool, the purpose of which was to facilitate
dialogue and information sharing. Yet,
despite the come from behind position of having to find uses for electricity, it
has become generally acknowledged as a commodity, where the Internet has
not. But, why not?
What does it take for something to
become a commodity? An essential
requirement is productization. The Internet, just as electricity, has been
made into a product. A further
qualification of the Internet as a commodity according to Merriam-Webster is
that it is bought and sold, but more importantly that its “wide availability
typically leads to smaller profit margins and diminishes the importance of
factors (as brand name) other than price”. Indeed the price of Internet services has
dramatically declined over the past two decades while the general availability
of services has increased just as dramatically.
Increasingly retail businesses including hotels, restaurants, airlines,
railways and public transit vehicles, provide Internet access free of charge to
customers on their premises. In
addition, the ongoing wars between the major Internet service providers as they
compete for consumers of residential service continues to exert downward
pressure on prices.
There now exists the expectation that
accessibility to the Internet is ubiquitous; that regardless of where we are or
what we are doing, we can connect to the Internet. In fact pervasive use of computing devices to
access services via the Internet has driven
a modern paradigm that assumes such capability as a fundamental operating
principle. This model has be instantiated by government,
businesses and institutions through the implementation of processes that rely
upon the general accessibility of Internet services by all. In other words, the assumption is that the
Internet is a commodity.
But, an assumption of accessibility
without the acknowledgement of the Internet as a commodity has left our society
in a strange limbo where Internet service providers continue to compete for the
dollars of those who can afford to pay for the service, and consumers who are
expected to have access to the Internet but cannot afford it become
disenfranchised; excluded from the new reality.
If in our new paradigm the Internet is a commodity, then we must
acknowledge it and treat it as such.
Everyone must be guaranteed access to the Internet.
Another feature of a commodity is
quality of service. Back to our
electricity metaphor, consumers do not experience differences in quality of
service. Everyone who has electricity
has power for all devices on their property on demand. The wealthy do not get a better quality of
electrical power than the poor. Businesses
do not compete based on whether or not they have electricity or the quality of
electricity in the physical plants. There
is a single quality standard that everyone receives. Returning to our discussion of the Internet,
there should be no distinction such as “Fast Internet”. Everyone should receive the same standard of
service and it should be the fastest that the providers can produce.
