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Tim Wu: iPhone central to “future of the Internet”

Mobile devices and mobile networks suffer far more restrictions than their …

At a conference this weekend, Tim Wu, the Columbia Law School prof who has done so much to popularize ideas about wired and wireless network neutrality, called Apple's iPhone the device "at the center of the battle for the future of the Internet."

Wu was speaking at the National Conference for Media Reform here in Minneapolis, put on by the media reform group Free Press (Wu has just become chair of the Free Press board). It's not that he doesn't like the iPhone; he does, he owns one, and he's jailbroken it. The problem is control, or, more accurately, the lack of control that device users have over their own devices.

Let's generate

It's an idea explored at length in Jonathan Zittrain's new book, The Future of the Internet (And How to Stop It), which argues that "generative" technologies like the personal computer and the Internet are at risk of being pushed to the margins by closed technologies like the iPhone, proprietary wireless networks, and game consoles.

While closed devices can offer a more controlled environment, better security, and fewer crashes, they can only be altered in ways supported by the companies that produced them. They remain incapable of spurring much further innovation, the kind of innovation that has exploded on open platforms. Zittrain has no problem with such devices, but he argues that it's best for society if generative devices remain central rather than fringe products.

Tim Wu

This idea of "generativity" is one of the key drivers of the network neutrality movement, and it's what Wu was getting at when he held up his iPhone. Open devices are important (and Apple is prepping a way to offer third-party apps to the iPhone platform, though not without passing through Apple's control), but they aren't much good these days without access to networks.

Access is generally available for wireline devices, where people can install any app they want on a computer and run it over a network without hindrance (unless your ISP is Bell Canada or Comcast). But wireless network operators have long restricted access to their networks to company-approved products like the iPhone, and they have offered only closed devices with limited feature sets. Some cracks in that model are beginning to appear as Verizon has agreed to open access to its network, but mobile access is becoming an increasingly important way to access the Internet, and that access still remains tightly controlled.

For instance, VoIP services like Skype are officially frowned upon by wireless companies, even when they offer EV-DO cards that provide broadband-class Internet access for laptops. That access is nowhere near as neutral as the access offered by wireline ISPs, who could never get away with trying to stop competitive services in the same way.

A path forward for broadband in the US 

Wu did some of the key work on this issue when Skype petitioned the Federal Communications Commission on wireless network neutrality, but the Commission ruled against the company. Wu told me after his talk, though, that he doesn't believe the issue of wireless neutrality is dead, and he expects open access rules to become a staple of telecom mergers in the future, such as the Alltel buyout just announced by Verizon. In addition, a Democratic majority on the FCC next year (should such a thing happen) might rule differently on the same issue should Skype petition them again.

For those who believe that the US has "an obvious infrastructure problem" when it comes to broadband, Wu suggested two paths forward, neither of which is exclusive. The first approach would be to accept that there's an enormous amount of market power in the last mile, and that we need government oversight to ensure a more-or-less neutral experience and prevent egregious Internet power grabs. This is the approach that works to lobby the FCC and hopes to pass Congressional net neutrality legislation.

The other approach recognizes the same last-mile problem but tries to subvert it by creating more last-mile alternatives. The market is already working hard on this front through the wireless phone companies and the backers of mobile "white spaces" devices, but it's also being aided by municipal deployments of fiber or WiFi and other public approaches. We are "too addicted to the phone companies and the cable companies as a source of bandwidth," Wu says. Like energy, we need to develop more alternative sources.

It was his own background in actually marketing nonneutral network devices that led Wu into his current work. Before entering academia, he worked for a device maker that sold products enabling ISPs to control what content people could access, and he helped market the idea that ISPs could make more cash by charging deep-pocketed Internet companies more money for faster access to customers. While he doesn't believe that every form of discrimination is bad, Wu did come to believe that his work was "probably not very good for the health of the Internet or the future of free speech."

The path of righteousness 

Wu, who was a student of the Congressional-corruption-buster Lawrence Lessig, speaks with passion, but as a scholar, a lawyer, and a media historian. Other voices at the conference, like Free Press executive director Josh Silver, paint the net neutrality fight as the "clash between democracy and plutocracy" and "one of the most profound fights of our lives." Silver, who told the story of how he devoted his life to public service after being ambushed and shot while on a trip to the Amazon, characterized the two paths before us as "the way of righteousness" or the "closed path" where giant companies decide what's on and how much it costs.

This sort of moralistic rhetoric is unlikely to sway the corporations that actually control the networks and devices in questions, but it's clear that they can be convinced to change their ways through public pressure and customer interest. With both Apple and Verizon agreeing to loosen the rules governing access to their devices and networks, other carriers and device makers may follow suit in the next year. And when the day comes that we have truly open devices and open networks that they can access, the huge explosion in creativity, innovation, and dollars (who wouldn't want such a device accessing such a network?) will hopefully spur a rash of copycats, even if they care nothing about defeating "plutocracy."

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