A recent status report by the FCC’s Broadband Task Force illuminates the thinking likely to underpin evolving regulatory treatment of telco and cable broadband assets. The 168-slide presentation (and here I thought the Obama administration’s rules against torture banned the use of such lengthy PowerPoint presentations) is replete with tautologies, my favorite being “The Internet creates value only if applications are adopted by consumers.” This is like saying roads are of value only if people drive on them. But one element of the report is worth highlighting: what do people use broadband for?
The task force presentation is pretty clear in this regard. People currently use broadband for the wrong things but in the future will use it for the right things. While today broadband is used for such non-enlightened activities as “web browsing, communicating, and watching entertainment,” in the future it will be used for activities exhibiting “utilitarian social benefit.” While today people watch streaming video, in the future they’ll be more inclined to watch “streaming lectures.” The conclusion one arrives at after sifting through this gargantuan slide deck is that we’ve all just been playing around with the internet and henceforth we’ll use the internet for things like distance learning, telemedicine, community service, government activism, civic participation, worker retraining, consumer welfare, and “other national purposes.” A bit ominous, that last one.
But this perspective doesn’t align with analysis regarding internet usage conducted by a number of research firms. An excellent example is IDC’s April, 2009 internet traffic survey. IDC projects that by the year 2013 roughly half of all downstream web traffic (which will by then total almost 300 million gigabits every single day in the US alone) will be composed of streaming video. And while certainly some of that will be college students watching lectures they missed, it’s a pretty safe bet that the vast majority of streaming video—my guess is over 90 percent—will be comprised of YouTubish video clips, television episodes, and feature-length HD movies, i.e., entertainment. The IDC report also estimates that the fastest growing traffic type is on-line gaming, hardly an activity contributing to greater social munificence.
Does it matter that the architects of regulations governing the operation of broadband assets have a world view that differs from the people that actually use the Internet? Possibly. If regulators envision a utopian future that has us all engaged in on-line “utilitarian social benefit” as opposed to gaming, tweeting, and watching movies, then it’s possible that regulations will get in the way of what people really want to do. And unless I’m mistaken, the primary objective of regulators is to protect the interests of the people.
