Out of Control

The only other incident this year that raised network neutrality questions was the unfortunate decision to blank out lyrics that were critical of President George W. Bush during an AT&T wireless webcast of a Pearl Jam concert. Immediately the net neutrality crowd jumped on the report, saying this proved the AT&T has the power to silence political dissent. Things got quiet awful fast when it turned out an employee of the company managing the webcast, not AT&T, had made a unilateral and unauthorized decision to delete the lyrics. AT&T apologized and made an uncut version of the concert available to customers.

But we hope that before rushing to regulate the network, Congress takes note of Google’s plan to give network neutrality a bona fide market test. This week Google unveiled Android, an operating system that will power its promised GPhone, and which Google intends to make freely available to manufacturers and software developers who want an alternative to service provider channels. Android incorporates some Linux software and is supposedly open source. To support the project, Google has spearheaded the Open Handset Alliance, a forum that includes some heavy hitters like Qualcomm, Broadcom, Intel, Samsung, Motorola, Sprint, and Texas Instruments, although brand name membership does not always equate with influence. And from what I understand, the Android-based GPhone is still some time away from marketability.

While it’s fair to say that this whole initiative may have gotten a shot in the arm from the FCC’s decision to set aside a portion of the 700 MHz spectrum for neutral business models, Google Android and the OHA are good examples of a competitive market response to the current way carriers and phone manufacturers tightly integrate. That’s competition at work. In this is serves as a good example that legislated network neutrality is not needed. If there is genuine consumer demand – and Google gets Android to work well enough that consumers accept it – there’s no need to legislate it.

However, we should be wary of attempts by the network neutrality crowd to call on government to give the Google model “an advantage” so to speak (the company got a big break with the auction rules already) and aggressively counter assertions that the Google approach is somehow ethically and morally superior to conventional models. Simply put, Google’s approach serves Google’s interest; AT&T’s approach serves AT&T’s interests. To the extent those interests coincide with consumer interests, the respective models will be successful.