Web of Lies or Web of Necessity?

 

The pandemic has had many long-term ramifications for us all. While our interconnected world has allowed people with distinctly extreme and often socially disastrous beliefs to unite and pose a greater combined threat, and as the ability to separate fact fiction has been severely compromised, we have nevertheless become dramatically dependent on the Internet. From simple communications between and among us, to ordinary commerce and banking, cries for emergency services and access to information, the Internet seems to have risen even above the telephone as our connected lifeline. Indeed, even instruments that are labeled in a manner that suggests traditional voice-to-voice communications – smart phones – they are devices that are primarily used for Web-based audio-visual research and connectivity.

The children most negatively impacted by the pandemic, medical issues notwithstanding, have been those unable comfortably to access online education or who are less familiar with its scope and operational capacity. As David Lazarus points out in his October 23^rd contribution to the Los Angeles Times, “After months of being stuck at home, many Americans know full well that there are three things they can’t live without. Two of them are power and water… The third, I’m sure, will be obvious to all…  Internet access… Imagine this prolonged ordeal without being able to work or attend school from home, without email, without being able to shop online, without streaming video and music.” For many, the Web has replaced not just the telephone, but both radio and television.

It’s a whole lot more than simple access these days. Bandwidth has become mission critical. Slow and inconsistent downloads and uploads, image and Web-page instability, crashing and lost signals and dead zones. Whether we get our Web access through a hard wire, fiber, satellite or some form of telephonic access (4G and perhaps 5G), the elegance of the signal fails if all we can access in old-world “dial-up” or snailing “broadband” misnomers. Americans think of themselves as technologically advanced, world leaders if you will. But for those of us who have traveled to Europe, Korea, Singapore or Japan, our overall capacity and pricing structure seems very “developing nation” level, although mega-corporations have managed to purchase massive fiber optic bandwidth to protect their interests. Many of these countries find even 100 mbs to be exceptionally slow and retarded, yet that is the gold standard for too many Americans.

Here how Lazarus summarizes our current technology compared to other advanced nations, and we seem to be solid and making progress: “At first glance, that seems to be true. Over the last decade, the percentage of Americans with access to broadband internet climbed to 93.5% from 74.5%, according to a recent report from BroadbandNow, a service comparison site… Meanwhile, the consumer price index for internet service has remained relatively stable over the same period, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics… The average U.S. internet user pays about $60 a month for service.

“But industry observers say we’re measuring things wrong. Rather than comparing current internet prices with how much we paid 10 years ago, we should be comparing our prices to what people in other developed countries pay… By that yardstick, Americans are getting a lousy deal, not just in terms of pricing but also in terms of service quality — that is, speed… A recent comparison of worldwide broadband charges by Britain’s Cable.co.uk, a telecom service provider, found that the U.S. ranked 119th out of 206 countries, with monthly costs far surpassing those of Germany, Britain and Japan.

“Another study, this one by DecisionData.org, found that although U.S. internet speeds had increased over the last decade, we’re not even in the top 10 . (Want fast internet? Move to Romania.).. ‘Americans have the slowest, most expensive internet in the world,’ said Ernesto Falcon, senior legislative counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, with just a bit of hyperbole.

“Telecom companies have been steadily raising internet prices to offset growing numbers of cord cutters ditching their TV plans. The companies are fond of saying that the main reason for these price hikes is investment in new high-speed lines… But Harold Feld, senior vice president of the advocacy group Public Knowledge, says this is misleading. Most of the necessary fiber-optic cables for current internet use are already in the ground, he said.”

Rates for varying levels of Internet access depend on the number of carriers in your immediate neighborhood. Pricing is all over the map, and if you happen to be in a household earning less that $30,000/year, chances are 44% that you do not have broadband access at all. Has meaningful Web access risen to the level of a ubiquitous public utility? Obviously, yes! But that’s not how the federal government sees it, and since FCC is the likely regulatory body, staffed with the administration’s profits-for-business underlying strategic priority, consumers are simply left by the wayside.

“‘If it wasn’t clear before, it’s now crystal clear that internet access is necessary to survive in our contemporary world, similar to electricity,’ said Catherine Powell, a law professor at Fordham University who focuses on digital rights and civil liberties… Susan Aaronson, director of the Digital Trade and Data Governance Hub at George Washington University, went so far as to say affordable high-speed internet access ‘is a service that government should provide… It is an essential public good and should be embedded in the law as some nations do… It is essential to equality of opportunity, access to credit, access to other public goods, access to education.’

“This is a separate matter from debates about regulation of internet content, or whether behemoths such as Google and Facebook have too much power… The position of the U.S. government — not to mention phone and cable companies — is that the internet is a free-market service, full stop. It’s not a utility… Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, says the internet industry merits only what he calls ‘light-touch’ regulation, which is to say hardly any regulation at all.” Trying to function in society today without broadband access is increasingly akin to trying to live as an illiterate in any first world nation. Without that social umbilical cord, people are left isolated, abandoned as well as politically and economically excluded.

“‘The internet is the direct descendant of the U.S. telephone network,’ said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a digital rights advocacy group… Until the phone industry was deregulated in the 1980s and ’90s — a move that boosted competition for a while before the industry reunited into a handful of big players — ‘it was the first information utility,’ he told [Lazarus]… The internet now plays that role, Chester said.

“Aaronson at George Washington University says one reason we lag behind other advanced countries is we don’t view broadband as a right — just as we don’t view healthcare or higher education as things all people are entitled to… This, she told me, is incredibly shortsighted… ‘Access to broadband is essential for society as a whole to succeed,’ Aaronson said… The very definition of a utility.” Lazarus. More affluent cities across the United States are implementing free and ubiquitous Internet access for all within city limits. But for many folks, especially in small towns or rural areas of limited bandwidth competition (and no satellite access is not that robust for most) or those in high cost cities, they are the forgotten ones. Those who wish to shove the United States back into the simple times of the 1950s need time machines, not policy power!

            I’m Peter Dekom, and by simply reprioritizing individuals and their well-being over corporate behemoths, admittedly a very different direction from current practices, we just might make this nation work for everybody.