Google and the Evolution of Communications Networks

Historically, communications policy has tended to react to the evolution of communications networks. Noam et al (1994: 17) suggest that network evolution can be identified in distinct stages:

1. The cost-sharing network. Expansion is based on the logic of spreading fixed costs across many participants, and increasing the value of telephone interconnectivity.

2. The redistributory network. The network grows through politically mandated transfers among users.

3. The pluralistic network. The uniformity of the network breaks apart because the interests of its numerous participants cannot be reconciled, and a federation of subnetworks emerges.

4. The global network. Various domestic subnetworks stratify internationally and form networks that transcend territorial constraints.

Network development, then, tends to be unilinear, in that there is ‘a single, consistent path of development or progression’ from ‘the primitive to the more advanced’. Nonetheless, national boundaries tend to limit the evolution of communications networks by limiting ownership and other issues in the 'public interest'.

In the US, Google Voice offers 'a single telephone number for home, work, and mobile phones and a central voicemail inbox that can be accessed through the web'. This is provided through GrandCentral.

It seems that Google Voice will soon be available to non-GrandCentral customers. Is this the first move to a truly global network? Does this signal the end of national communications policy as we know it?

Content versus Carriage

Canada provides an appropriate most-similar comparison to Australia for numerous reasons. However, the development of communications technologies in Canada follows a different trajectory to that in Australia. In addition to the local focus institutionalised by organisations such as the Union of Canadian Municipalities (now the Federation of Canadian Municipalities), Canada has been at the forefront of dealing with technological convergence in comparison to Australia.

In Canada yesterday, the CRTC conducted the New Media Hearings with a number of companies. One of the more interesting responses on industry structure came from Cogeco:

Cogeco expresses a need for a regime overhaul along the lines of European countries where there is no legal or administrative distinction between telecom and broadcast. Canadian laws are almost twenty years old on this and don't offer a comprehensive digital strategy.

The common carrier concept (designed to deliberately separate the carriage of specific content from a particular carrier) appears to be a remnant of the past. Nonetheless, issues such as preserving national identity (known by antagonists as 'cultural protectionism') are very important to Canadians. The vicinity of US cultural industries (TV, movies, radio etc) requires a particular policy response. Cultural protectionism is dealt with similarly in Australia, but it is really off the radar as far as an omnipresent threat is concerned.

A major problem for content regulators is that, for the most part, such regulators are stuck in an elitist paradigm based on TV and radio broadcasting. By 'elitist' I mean where one content provider beams their content to numerous viewers. In the Internet era, even the average citizen has the opportunity to be a content provider in a many-to-many environment. The proliferation of tools such as youtube and Flickr reduces the need to control content. Elite content, to the best of my knowledge, really doesn't cut it on these types of applications.

While Canada may need to consider more carefully the ramifications of bridging the carriage versus content divide, there is a case for opening the divide in Australia. I know this would enable newspapers, television and radio stations to control national content, but in practice this is happening anyway. Breaking up the monopoly hold of Telstra and the free-to-air TV stations is a major task - the legacies are so entrenched in Australia - but enabling carriers to specify content would be better than the abysmal content Australians pay top-dollar for on the repetitive Foxtel channels. Until this situation changes, Australians are really missing out.

ISP Filtering: The Boring World of the Future

Paper never refused ink, and the Internet never refused key strokes. Until now.

The ACMA's decision to threaten Whirpool's ISP for content on the Whirlpool site is really pushing the envelope. It just goes to show how a handful of conservatives, driven by media hype and misinformation, can try to turn the greatest freedom machine into another area where the state scares citizens out of their wits about anything that they do online.

Sure, there are issues with illegal content and there needs to be a mechanism for addressing these issues. But if the Net is to remain a freedom machine, regulation needs to be ex post. You post illegal content, you get in trouble.

Ex ante regulation, where the government blacklists sites and makes ISPs filter them, is a disgrace. Compare the Advertising Standards Burea to ACMA. One asks companies to stop using offensive content, the other uses a sledge-hammer on the ISP.

Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy has suggested that opponents of the filtering scheme are involved in "patently a scare campaign [against] a policy objective we think is fair and reasonable". Given the track-record of Australian governments and their willingness to overlook the rights of citizens and well-regarded principles of liberal democracies, I wonder what 'fair and reasonableness' test has been applied to the policy?

For all the 'individual responsibility' which has been pushed on ordinary citizens over the last few years, this really is a backward step. Welcome to the boring, state-regulated world of the future!