The difference between enhanced and “enhanced” service |
Scott Karp read my description of what the Net Neutrality rejection means and chose to extract one sentence with a very carefully planted set of quotes around the word: “enhanced.” I didn’t give much more emphasis on why I think the House rejecting Net Neutrality was a bad idea, but I’m happy to do so now, and to explain why I used double quotes around that word. It was far from accidental and wasn’t meant as a quote but as the core issue. I see one of Scott’s commenters already sees what I meant when he points to a degradation in service. Bingo.
But first, Mr. Karp proceeded to ask a curious question:
Isn’t it true everywhere in life that those who pay more get an enhanced experience?Cars
Restaurants
Hotels
Air travel
Medical care
Legal representation
Cheese
Flat screen TVs
Baseball tickets
What Karp is asking is more about premium and luxury than what I was driving at by putting double quotes around the word “enhanced.” There is a big difference between offering those who pay more additional features, perks and content then downgrading the basic service people are already using. Let me try and use his specific examples to explain when and where I feel things would be wrong.
Cars. Sure, if you want to drive a tricked out BMV and me a Hyundai, you’ll get a better driving experience. However, the road we drive on, will be the same. The road signs will be the same and the exits and turnoffs will lead to the same place. You still have to drive the speed limit, just as me, which means you won’t get from point A to point B any faster. You can’t pay a fee and jump into a special lane — ok, well maybe in some places you can with carpool lanes — but if I rideshare with another person I can drive in that lane without any charge. Therefore, that gives you no advantage over the same road access than me.
Hotels and Restaurants. If you want to get a decked out suite, you can pay thousands a night compared to my $75/night room, sure, but if we turn on the TV, we’ll still see the same channels. If we go down and eat at the restaurant we’ll still be served the same menu. Maybe because you paid more, you’ll get a better seat at the restaurant than me, but the duck will still be the duck if we both order the same item on the menu. And you won’t get your food injected into your belly any faster than I would eating it normally. Well, maybe if you eat like a pig …
Air Travel. You might pay for first class and get silverware and china to eat with compared to my coach class ticket. Maybe you get a bigger chair, but the plane isn’t getting you to the destination any faster.
Medical Care. More money might give you access to a better insurance policy and/or the ability to pay for care that I cannot, but it doesn’t mean if we both are diagnosed with cancer and both have six months left to live that either of us isn’t going to meet the same fate. Sure, you might be able to afford more expensive and radical treatment methods, but the rich cannot cheat death with a dollar bill.
Legal Representation. Ahh, the OJ defense argument. Can’t argue against more money helping here although I would add that in many cases, particularly with smaller legal cases, attorneys aren’t neccessary. So if you have a lower dollar amount case it really matters that much. The word “fair trial” does remain in question for people with lesser financial means sadly.
Flat screen TVs. Sure, the more expensive TV you buy, the better quality picture. However you don’t receive the TV signal slower than your neighbor. The cable company doesn’t say, gee whiz, you don’t have one of the super fancy LCD HDTVs so we can’t offer you the signal as fast. Money only changes the quality of the signal and offers additional pay programming channels. That’s not the same as downgrading the basic channels for only those who pay for the basic channels.
Baseball Tickets. Safeco field is one of my favorite fields. Sure, if you buy a luxury box you can get personal servants moving food in and out while you watch the game, but we’re both still seeing the same baseball game at the same time. You don’t get to pay more and see the game finished in one hour instead of three. Money doesn’t buy any sort of priority in the event changing itself.
If I want to get a faster internet connection, I can buy a bigger pipe, but there is still a limit as to how fast the content can come down the pipe and I’ll probably reach that before the other side pumps it to me. There is a huge difference between a company being able to pay to be put in a fast lane and give me a better experience than their competitor OR degrade that final experience for the people who don’t pay. Of course there’s anti-trust and we can say that’s not going to happen. Set your clocks now to see how long that lasts.
Karp writes:
Other than love, those who pay more almost always get something better (or at the very least something that can be perceived as better). It’s deeply naive to expect that the web would turn out to be any different.
What is deeply naive is to believe that companies will not try to use and abuse the fast lane to their advantage. Even at the expense of damaging an existing infrastructure that is working and allowing more and more people to access. Toll booths for access to content that is supposed to be free is the big crime here.
The only problem I have with “enhanced” is when it degrades the basic experience for all. There is a bigger issue here and one that time will take to play out properly.
Update 4:40pm PST: Karp responded with the following:
“Content that is supposed to be free” — ah, well, there’s the problem. Maybe Google, and Yahoo, and YouTube, and everyone else want to make their content and services free, but they are NOT THE ONLY PROVIDER in the value chain. If Google wants to provide me with internet access, then they can do whatever they want — make it ALL free.
There is free as in free beer and free as in open. Perhaps I should have put double quotes around “free.” billg in Karp’s comments points out that the telcos and cable companies are monopolies which is an excellent point. My fear is that where we live we’ll be left with a small few choices and offerings. The local phone company had a monopoly here on long distance. The same company offered free long distance in the US in other areas but not ours. So we were paying 11 cents a minute for long distance when we could have moved five miles and got an unlimited plan. That’s why we went to VoIP which has been in the crosshairs for awhile with other vendors.
Though it might seem contradictory to my points here, I’m not for bigger government. I am for keeping the status quo for the spirit of the internet. That means keep it open and free, not free as in companies don’t have the right to charge more money for perks and premium content, but open so that my friend in rural Illinois will see and experience the same internet as me in Washington state.
I would like to ask Scott Karp — which I will do in the comments below — the following question: Do you think the internet would be as successful as it is today if everyone didn’t have the same basic access no matter what type of connection they used (dialup, broadband, T1, ADSL, etc)?
I do not. I think it would have been a passing fad. And a quick one at that. It has to stay open with the same basic equal access to continue to prosper and expand.
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[…] UPDATE: TDavid does a fabulous point-by-point deconstruction of my examples above in a follow-up post. There a couple of a key points at issue here: There is a big difference between offering those who pay more additional features, perks and content then downgrading the basic service people are already using. […]
Pingback by Publishing 2.0 » Those Who Pay More Will Get an Enhanced Experience — June 9, 2006 @ 4:23 pm PST
“There is a big difference between offering those who pay more additional features, perks and content then downgrading the basic service people are already using.”
Undoubtedly the threat is that the ISPs will essentially rewrite the terms of service to give us LESS than we are currently getting for what we pay.
So what?
Many airlines no longer provide a hot meal. If you don’t like it, you can drive. If your ISP is providing less for the same price, then switch. It’s a FREE MARKET.
But wait, the argument goes…
“What is deeply naive is to believe that companies will not try to use and abuse the fast lane to their advantage. Even at the expense of damaging an existing infrastructure that is working and allowing more and more people to access. Toll booths for access to content that is supposed to be free is the big crime here.”
“Content that is supposed to be free” — ah, well, there’s the problem. Maybe Google, and Yahoo, and YouTube, and everyone else want to make their content and services free, but they are NOT THE ONLY PROVIDER in the value chain.
If Google wants to provide me with internet access, then they can do whatever they want — make it ALL free.
But as long as internet companies are not providing the entire service end-to-end, then they can’t expect to dictate the terms of service.
Comment by Scott Karp — June 9, 2006 @ 4:24 pm PST
Nicely said. Way better than me. *grin* The thing with the “enhanced” service is.. well.. there isn’t any. They want to stick QoS rules on their routers and make larger pipe users pay for it because it doesn’t cost them anything to do it with, and the the larger pipe users usually have deeper pockets.
If they’re going to pull it off, they have to think about it a bit further instead of doing this half-assed. But I supposed that’s what making six-seven figures does to a person. Makes them think half-assed.
Comment by darkmoon — June 9, 2006 @ 4:48 pm PST
I don’t claim to be an expert on Net Neutrality, but I would suggest looking at other examples of what happens to markets where access is “leveled” for everyone. It’s often not pretty. Equality evens things out in the short term, but deincentivizes innovation in the long run because money isn’t allowed to flow to entities providing improved services and technologies.
If the problem is monopoly abuse, then deal with that. But involving the government and trying to use laws to create fairness has historically been fraught with problems. It should be done carefully.
Comment by Richard Kuo — June 9, 2006 @ 5:42 pm PST
Question for you, Scott and Richard: Do you think the internet would be as successful as it is today if everyone didn’t have the same basic access no matter what type of connection they used (dialup, broadband, T1, ADSL, etc)?
Comment by TDavid — June 9, 2006 @ 7:53 pm PST
@Richard: Wait wait… did I just hear this right? “Equality evens things out in the short term, but deincentivizes innovation in the long run because money isn’t allowed to flow to entities providing improved services and technologies.”
You have got to be kidding me. The market your corporation plays in is a totally different ballpark from Internet business models.
Your corporation and the one I work for don’t help in equality of playing field. On the bigger picture, the Net was built for information sharing. There wouldn’t be such a thing called “open-source” if the Net was created in the corporate world. If you’re sharing across the board with academics and other institutions that have nothing to deal with business models, then the field itself is different:
@Scott: You point out that you pay more for broadband than dialup. So? I remember a time where I didn’t pay for any service. Plug up a modem, dial a number and go. The issue here is that the Tier 1’s aren’t providing a service. They’re strictly data transport. Period. They have consumer-end models, but the influx of their bankroll comes from the major node traffic. Net neutrality is concerning that particular angle. In the end, the reason why they want to QoS everything? Own agenda. Besides the fact that they can promote their own projects, they can also syphon off bandwidth for other needs. It has nothing to do with enhanced service. Another key point that no one has brought up: fiber for telecommunications was mandated by government grants, and thus paid for by taxpayers. Much of the Bell’s success has been levying this grant source into corporate gain.
@TDavid: I’m not sure why people are still focusing on end-user relationships. The NN fight trickles down to end-user, but it’s not fought at that level and shouldn’t be. I think I’ve realized what the issue is with above comments and the anti-net neutrality arguments now. It seems that they don’t understand the Internet for what it was created, and where it stands. Internet in itself is a virtual society (heck, much like Second Life). Trying to point out bounds by corporations that are bound by physical models versus virtual is a pretty useless argument. It’s like a man asking a woman, how it feels to be a woman. You’ll never know.
Whatever, it’s too early, and I’ve been rambling.
Comment by darkmoon — June 10, 2006 @ 8:49 am PST
darkmoon, if you will note, the Internet has been built over the past decade largely by a mix of corporate and end-user driven interest, with minimal governmental interference after the initial seed.
TDavid, same thing. The freedom of information on the Internet was certainly paramount in its success. But it exists today and formed in the past without having to legislate it in a heavy handed fashion. Laws have unintended consequences that frequently warp the direction of the market…look at the excesses of misdirected spending in DC, the patent system, public schools, etc, etc. It’s rarely a good idea to get the government involved.
Part of my engineering background makes me uncomfortable in stating definitives without having researched the subject thoroughly, so I won’t claim to know more than you. I very likely don’t. But I don’t have any problem pointing to history and precedent as some cautionary tales. I trust individual people voting with their dollars more than the heavy hand of government.
Y’all may be right…this may be a different case. But there are good lessons to be learned from past experiences. This is not the first or last time something like this will come up.
Comment by Richard Kuo — June 10, 2006 @ 11:34 am PST