Free internet is something that has talked about by quite a few people, and something that we here at netBlazr are often enthralled by and represents one of our pie-in-the-sky, ultimate goals.
In an article released yesterday in Web Pro News, Niklas Zennstrom, one of the co-founders of Skype, offers his vision for free broadband for all Americans. The motto for his venture? “The internet is a right, not a privilege.”
While there are many interesting questions and challenges in bringing free internet to all Americans, including the powerful forces at Verizon, AT&T, and others, some of which netBlazr has already encountered, I personally wonder about the premise of FreedomPop: is the internet really a human right? Is it up there with water, food, freedom from persecution, and the like?
Would love to hear your thoughts.
Michael Elling
The internet (IP) people have it wrong. Web 1.0 (aka the internet) was a legacy outgrowth of the breakup of AT&T. It’s layer 1-2 foundations (flat-rate dial-up pricing) were a result of a monopolistic response to a competitive WAN (metered) threat. The baby bells expanded LATAs and offered flat rate dialup to sell additional lines and keep AT&T, MCI and Sprint from breaking their 5E bottleneck. And they further have it wrong when they argue for bill and keep. There are four things wrong with bill and keep: 1) it keeps new entrants out; 2) it discourages/prevents new service creation; 3) it makes a centralized procurement process (800, VPN, etc..) impossible; and 4) it does not provide a mechanism to pay for and/or reward layer 1-3 investment by layer 7 service providers.