aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Sunday, March 19, 2006

TV is going to be TV, delivered like TV, for a very long time

I’m one of those who keeps saying we’re on the cusp of a new TV. I believe we are. Unfortunately, I know too that Mark Cuban is right when he tells us our infrastructure’s far from ready:

The viewing of internet video will continue to grow. We will upload and download more and more video, consuming increasing amounts of bandwidth. We will want to download movies in High Def quality. Digital pictures will increase in resolution, and we will upload and share our lives through digital pictures that consumes multiple mbs per picture. Too do all of the above without limit, where and when you want to do it just cant happen. For the vast majority of us, there wont be enough bandwidth for at will , unlimited downloads.

You heard it here first. Instead of Net Nanny at home, you will have Download Nanny on yours and the kids or roommates PCs.  If your roommate tries to download a 2gb movie at 9pm, and you still have to work to do later, you cant face the risk of the connection slowing to a crawl and timing out . You are going to set Download Nanny to pop up the dreaded “I dont think so Tim” window that reschedules the download to whatever open time it calculates is available based on the average download speed at any given time of day for your internet connection.

We will reach a point in the next few years where we are complaining about internet speed all the time.  This wont be a corporate issue, it will be a home issue. We wont be able to do all the things we want to do on the net how and when we want to do it.

Susan Crawford sees the problem and can imagine an answer:

I’ve come to believe that someone, some government actor, has to get involved.  This is a big shift, and it’s happening (for me, at least) because there isn’t any real competition in the market for unfettered internet access.  Indeed, there’s no competition at all in that marketplace.  All the big guys believe that they should own and control and prioritize.

This doesn’t mean that I’ve given up on worrying about the FCC and its abilities.  If it is going to become the “internet agency,” and if it’s going to be our place for open road rules, the Commission needs to change.  It’s going to need to pay higher salaries so that more technical people go there.  It’s going to need to allow the staff to do good work without fearing political overruling at the top.  It can’t be a backwater—it will have to be a great and innovative place to work.

I’m from the regulated cable era that, with all its shortcomings, seemed better than this. I remember Al Gore while he was inventing the Internet, and from me he gets the credit he’s due. We need an elected official with his level of understanding now.

These days folks say that a post-regulatory incentivized system can do what regulation could not. I’m listening, I’m watching, I’d like to see it. But so far I haven’t seen such a system even described much less working.

So I’m right there with you Susan, hoping against hope that your vision is even remotely possible.