Well, it was fun while it lasted.

But unless Congress and the FCC act to protect it, the Internet as we know it will cease to exist.

Regional monopoly incumbents such as Verizon and BellSouth are pushing to create a new kind of Internet – one where the content of big media companies get priority, while smaller content providers are segregated to their own Internet ghetto...

Back in the mid 1990’s it was impossible to read a newspaper or watch TV without hearing about how the Internet was going to revolutionize the media. This promise was based on the fact that anyone -- not just the wealthy corporate production companies -- could produce and supply content.

This principle of “network neutrality” is a vital feature of the Internet. It means the owners of the network (the cable and telecom companies) aren’t allowed to dictate what the network is used for, and aren’t allowed to control the innovations that the network spawns.

Hostility to network neutrality by the network owners is nothing new. The old AT&T monopoly tried to kill the Internet before it was born. In 1964, when the company first heard about Paul Baran’s invention of packet-switching (the technology that the Internet is based on), an AT&T executive said, “damned if we’ll allow the creation of a competitor to ourselves”. AT&T wanted to control all innovation on the network, especially innovations that threatened its core business.

High-speed Internet technology, or Broadband, and the innovations it has spawned, such as Internet telephony and streaming video, does exactly that – it threatens the monopoly businesses of the cable and telephone companies. Thus, its not too surprising to learn that broadband in the U.S. is merely a shadow of what is available elsewhere in the world. A typical U.S. connection offers download speeds of 2Mbps (megabits per second) and costs about $40 per month. But for the same price, Japanese consumers can get a connection that is 50 times faster. The French company ‘Free’ offers its customers a 15Mbps connection, unlimited long distance telephony, and 100 TV channels, all for about $38 USD per month. Just 5 years ago the U.S. was 4th in the world in terms of per capita broadband use -- now we’re 15th.

But instead of addressing this problem by investing in upgrading their networks, the incumbents just want to extract more economic rents from those using the network for innovation.

This is an important issue to the future of media. And no matter what your number one policy interest is, media should be number two. Everything is viewed through it.

I’ll be blogging more about this as network neutrality legislation moves its way through Congress. It’s an uphill battle. Nearly every member of Congress has taken money from the cable and telecom lobbies, and the current head of the FCC has signaled his eagerness to do the incumbents bidding. As it is with so many other issues, the viewpoint of the public interest community is not really a concern of policymakers.