The Google Verizon net neutrality proposal

I do not want to critique the recent net neutrality legislative proposal introduced by Google and Verizon and take any side here - the openists or the deregulationists. A lot has already been said and I believe that there is a middleway of proving the basic internet freedom to the end consumer- freedom of choice of content, service, device and freedom of information about the internet plan. I have been following Prof Tim Wu of the Columbia Law School's ideas about internet regulation and am still waiting to hear what he has to say about this.

However, what concerns me about the proposal is that it was introduced by Google. Sure, the network providers have always be proponents of the deregulation of the internet. Carriers do not want to be a dumb pipe and have been looking for ways and means to develop a smart pipe equipped by the capability to provide faster or slower services based on the priority of data carried by them.

The argument that wireless networks are different (cited by Google-Verizon, and later supported by AT&T) is true to some extent. They do  have technical limitations of bandwidth as opposed to the optical fiber cable. This was highlighted by the radical expansion of data bandwidth brought about the mass adoption of smartphones like iPhone. However, the carriers dealt with this issue by introducing tiered bandwidth usage based data subscription plans which was a fair 'pay by usage' model. The industry and the consumers accepted this model pretty well.

In the light of the industry decision making process proponed by the deregulationists, it is expected that the mobile networks will strive to provide a variety of content and services to the end users in order to continue being competetive. Any alliance with a web service heavy weight like Google definitely smells that network preference will not only be for certain services but for certain services provided by certain players. The next apparant step would be partnerships among mobile networks and web service companies leading to industry verticalization. Whether verticalization is good or bad is a question I have been thinking about.

That brings me to the topic of my thesis -"Evolving structure of the mobile industry" wherein I suggest that the mobile industry is moving from a modular to a more integral nature. I will look at this topic in some more detail- more to follow!