issues

     key issues and forces

1)  basic standards for connectivity - engineering specifications so that the network remains 'open', accommodating technological developments and not being balkanised by the providers of particular products or services

2)  addressing, ie the identification of sites and devices, whether fixed or mobile. 

This is currently the most contentious aspect of network management and likely to continue to be so as broadband becomes more available

3)  traffic - questions about who is allowed to access networks and the prices charged. 

Overall, Australian domestic and business consumers pay significantly more to be online than overseas counterparts. And dominant carriers such as Telstra, understandably, are hastening slowly to open up their networks. Internationally, traditional telecommunications pricing means that most countries pay the US for the privilege of running an information deficit: cable and satellite traffic from the US is greater than traffic to North America.

Those issues reflect technological and commercial developments; convergence means that hardware/software vendors have as much influence as telecommunications companies. 

They also reflect changing perceptions of the role of government, with a regulatory revolution since 1970s as national telecommunications companies lost monopoly status, were privatised and made cross-border alliances or acquisitions.

They are explored in more detail in the following pages of this guide. The separate governance guide considers broader questions of regulating cyberspace.

The final pages of this guide highlight non-technical issues, such as price and usability. Irrespective of available technology and agreement on standards, developments such as WAP and broadband are revolutions waiting to occur ... because of fundamental questions about affordability and usability.

     background

Among collections of papers covering internet standards and network management issues two volumes from the Harvard Information Infrastructure Project series stand out.

Standards Policy For The Information Infrastructure (Cambridge, MIT Press 95) is a comprehensive set of papers edited by Brian Kahin & Janet Abbate. Although individual comments have started to show their age - five years is a long time on the internet - the book is essential reading. Abbate's the author of the best history of the early internet, discussed in more detail in our profile of the web's evolution.

It is complemented by Coordinating the Internet (Cambridge, MIT Press 97), a slimmer and less technical collection edited by Brian Kahin & James Keller. It explores policy questions and standards mechanisms regarding domain naming, trademarks, traffic management, pricing and other matters.

Christine Borgman's From Gutenberg to the Global Information Infrastructure: Access To Information in the Networked World (Cambridge, MIT Press 00) offers a succinct introduction that ties together issues that recur throughout the guides on this site. It is strongly recommended. 

The December 99 paper by Vinton Cerf & Robert Kahn on What Is The Internet (And What Makes It Work) is another excellent introduction, one more specifically on standards. Marcus Maher's 1998 paper An Analysis of Internet Standardization offers a legal perspective on connectivity standards. Scaffolding the New Web: Standards & Standards Policy for the Digital Economy (Santa Monica, RAND 00) by Martin Libicki & David Frelinger is provocative.

Frances Cairncross' The Death of Distance (London, Orion 97) and the exemplary Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy (Boston, Harvard Business School Press 99) by Hal Varian & Carl Shapiro are considerably more insightful than George Gilder's loopy Telecosm: How Infinite Bandwidth Will Revolutionise Our World (New York, Free Press 00). Varian & Shapiro are particularly valuable for discussion of 'network effects' in the adoption of standards.

Ithiel de Sola Pool's prescient Technologies Without Boundaries: On Telecommunications in a Global Age (Cambridge, Harvard Uni Press 90) teased out implications.

Global Business Regulation (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 00) by John Braithwaite & Peter Drahos offers a lucid analysis of regulatory mechanisms. There's a somewhat drier account in The Regulation of International Trade (London, Routledge 99) by Michael Trebilcock & Robert Howse.

In contrast, Law & Disorder in Cyberspace: Abolish the FCC and let Common Law rule the Telecosm (New York, Oxford Uni Press 97), a tract from free-market evangelist Peter Huber, is provocative but unconvincing. 

There's more bite in many of the documents identified in our governance guide, such as Henry Perritt's paper on The Role & Efficacy of International Bodies & Agreements in the Global Electronic Marketplace and the Global Internet Project's 1999 paper on Jurisdiction in Cyberspace.

     historical perspectives

Despite claims that the global information infrastructure is revolutionary and unprecedented, the history of telecommunications (and of other networks such as railways and power systems) suggests that we have been grappling successfully with standards and with management questions for at least 100 years.

Peter Hughill's Global Communications Since 1844: Geopolitics & Technology (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Uni Press 99) and Brian Winston's excellent Media Technology & Society: A History from the Telegraph to the Internet (London, Routledge 99) offer a useful perspective. We've pointed to other studies and conceptual models in our profile on communications revolutions and the separate profile on the evolution of the web.

Constructing World Culture: International NonGovernmental Organizations Since 1875 (Stanford, Stanford Uni Press 99), edited by John Boli, offers insights into the evolution of the International Telecommunications Union, the International Standards Organization and industry-specific bodies. 


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