Dump the Silo Model: Free the Bits

Right now telecommunications law is based on silos.

There’s a cable silo. There’s a telephone silo. There’s a broadcast silo. There’s a wireless silo. There’s an Internet silo.

Each silo has its own rules. Most have their own taxes. Each has its own monopolists.

The time has come to break up the silos.

Bits are bits. Cable sends digital bits that are turned into TV pictures. Broadcasters are going digital to send HDTV. Telephony switched to bits long ago. Wireless bits are all around us, on both licensed and unlicensed frequencies.

So the time has come for the government, and the market, to treat bits as bits. Since everyone is selling bits, all they really need are incentives to sell more. And since there’s no shortage of bits, there is no longer an excuse for content regulation. Put the power to censor at the edge, alongside the power to explore.

Europe is already moving in this direction, at least in relation to telecomm.  The U.S. Senate, on the other hand, is moving in the opposite direction, toward entrenching the monopolies and forbidding even the people, through their local government, from competing with them.

This is a recipe for national economic disaster. It’s regulation in the Mexican style, and I don’t think Canada will take all of us in.

Bob Frankston says we should all own our own infrastructure. Bob Cringely calls for people to own their own last mile.

I agree, but I’m into simplicity. I say, free the bits.

These are sugar free toffee bits, sold by Girl Scouts every fall. Not free, but reasonable, and for a good cause.

Getting from here to there means blowing up a century of laws designed both to control content and to collect taxes, laws based on an assumption of scarcity. Regulators don’t want to free the telecomm bits because they’re on the take, in the form of “stealth” taxes (look at your own bill sometime). The same is true for cable.

But the companies that sell these bits are also in on the scam. They make more money by defining bits as “services” and by controlling what those bits do, than they would otherwise. That’s because, by selling services, they’re able to act as monopolists, as gatekeepers, controlling both the customers and the content. If they were selling bits they would have to compete, and all their power would be gone.

This dance of definition, taxation and regulation made sense 40 years ago, when technology was analog, spectrum was scarce, and networking was complex. But today anyone can be a network manager for the price of a $100 router.

So you should have the power over bits, no one else. You, the consumer, and you, the producer of content defined by bits, should have the power to choose how you send them and choose how you get them, without constraint. When you want to send bits or receive bits, you have the right to a competitive market. And you have the right to define what those bits mean.

The market, and the government, exist to serve you, not monopolists. You have the power to make this happen, but only if you seize that power, only if you demand that power, only if you organize with a single, simple demand:

Free the Bits.