[governance] FW: [Dewayne-Net] When public infrastructure goes private

[michael gurstein]

-----Original Message-----
From: dewayne-net at warpspeed.com [mailto:dewayne-net at warpspeed.com] On Behalf
Of Dewayne Hendricks
Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2013 9:15 AM
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] When public infrastructure goes private

When public infrastructure goes private
Google is bringing a fiber-optic data network to homeowners in Kansas City,
Mo., and Kan., but without the usual regulations. That means underprivileged
neighborhoods may be left in the digital dust.
By Michael Hiltzik
April 12, 2013
<http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20130412,0,1294414.column>

Consider some of the things that have bound our nation together:

Universal postal service at a flat rate, whether you live in Santa Monica or
Sitka, Alaska. Interstate highways, built with taxpayer funds and free of
tolls. Regulated phone and electric service, with lifeline rates for the
economically disadvantaged.

These were all based on a social contract honoring the notion that essential
infrastructure should be available to all - indeed, that those normally left
by the side of the economic road might be most in need.

But you can kiss that notion goodbye, because today's model of building
public infrastructure is to let private companies do it.

Americans are becoming more dependent on privately operated toll roads to
get where we're going, and on private delivery services likeFedEx and UPS to
carry our parcels. But the greatest shift has occurred in the sector that is
most crucial in the information age: communications and data networks.

That brings us to Google - as happens sooner or later with any discussion
touching on digital technology. The Mountain View, Calif., behemoth has
branched into the Internet service business by introducing a fiber-optic
data network for homeowners in Kansas City, Mo., and its neighboring
namesake in Kansas.

The service, which is expected to be fully functional by the end of this
year, is upending the traditional business and regulatory model for phone,
video and data communications. But Google managed to exempt itself from the
regulations that typically force cable companies to wire all neighborhoods,
rich, poor and in between, for the Internet. The result threatens to leave
underprivileged neighborhoods in the digital dust.

Ceding such a crucial service to a private company with minimal regulation
is something that happened with virtually no public discussion about its
implications for society.

"The dialogue has to happen at the national level, because it can't happen
at the local level," says Shannon Jackson, an anthropologist at the
University of Missouri-Kansas City.

It's unsurprising that Google's activities underscore the evolution of the
infrastructure model, because the company is pervasive. Its Gmail is the
nation's largest single email network, relied on by millions of users for
daily communications. But Google is still a corporation, and if it decided
tomorrow that Gmail didn't produce for its bottom line, nothing could stop
the company from shutting it down. Compare that to the obstacles facing the
U.S. Postal Service in its desire merely to end Saturday mail delivery to
save money; under intense political pressure,USPS last weekdropped the plan.

Google is not the only firm that provides a service on which millions of
users have come to depend but which is wholly subject to private economic
decision-making. Facebook claims more than a billion users worldwide, but
its network is heavily geared toward exploiting their personal information
to make money for itself.

[snip]

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