related
Guides:

Metrics &
Statistics

Governance

Security &
InfoCrime





related
Profiles:

communication
revolutions

domains

ICANN

ITU

auDA &
dot-au

dot-nz

Aust & NZ
telecoms

     issues

This page highlights some issues regarding the global information infrastructure.

It covers -

• introduction
• key issues and forces
• background
• historical perspectives
• resources

     introduction

Contrary to the fears or hopes of some, the internet is not owned or managed by a single commercial corporation, international agency or non-profit body. Instead, its operation reflects the involvement of a wide range of standards bodies, regulatory agencies and service providers. 

That patchwork quilt of competing agendas, recurrent negotiations and disputed jurisdictions has many precedents. Overall it has worked quite effectively and will accommodate the growing involvement of advocacy bodies of different persuasions.

     key issues and forces

The 'network of networks' embraces a wide range of devices, software and telecommunication systems (including those that are wireless). 

As a result, from a technical perspective there are three key issues -

• 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
• 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.
• 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 1995) 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 is the author of the best history of the early internet, discussed in more detail in the profile of the net's evolution.

It is complemented by Coordinating the Internet (Cambridge: MIT Press 1997), 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. An Australian perspective on standards development is provided in Winton Higgins' Engine of Change: Standards Australia Since 1922 (Blackheath: Brandl & Schlesinger 2005).

Christine Borgman's From Gutenberg to the Global Information Infrastructure: Access To Information in the Networked World (Cambridge: MIT Press 2000) offers a succinct introduction that ties together issues that recur throughout the guides on this site. It is strongly recommended. 

The Semantic Web, a 2001 article by Tim Berners-Lee, offers a view of the web's future. There is a more philosophical treatment in Interconnecting The Network of Networks (Cambridge: MIT Press 2001) by Ithiel De Sola Pool's disciple Eli Noam.

The December 1999 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 2000) by Martin Libicki & David Frelinger is provocative. The 1998 OECD discussion paper (PDF) on Internet Infrastructure Indicators remains of value.

Frances Cairncross' The Death of Distance (London: Orion 1997), Jeffery Wheatley's World Telecommunications Economics (Stevenage: IEE Press 1999) and the exemplary Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy (Boston: Harvard Business School Press 1999) by Hal Varian & Carl Shapiro are considerably more insightful than George Gilder's chiliastic Telecosm: How Infinite Bandwidth Will Revolutionise Our World (New York: Free Press 2000). Varian & Shapiro are particularly valuable for discussion of 'network effects' in the adoption of standards.

Ithiel de Sola Pool's provocative Technologies Without Boundaries: On Telecommunications in a Global Age (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 1990) teased out implications.

Global Business Regulation (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2000) by John Braithwaite & Peter Drahos offers a lucid analysis of regulatory mechanisms. There is a somewhat drier account in The Regulation of International Trade (London: Routledge 1999) 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 1997), a tract from free-market evangelist Peter Huber, is provocative but unconvincing. 

There is less excitement but for us more bite in The Communications Toolkit: How to Build and Regulate Any Communications Business (Cambridge: MIT Press 2002) by Patricia Longstaff & Anthony Oettinger and many of the documents identified in the 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 1999), The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900 (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 2007) by David Edgerton and Brian Winston's excellent Media Technology & Society: A History from the Telegraph to the Internet (London: Routledge 1999) offer a useful perspective. Pointers to other studies and conceptual models are found in the profile on communications revolutions and the separate profile on the evolution of the net.

Constructing World Culture: International NonGovernmental Organizations Since 1875 (Stanford: Stanford Uni Press 1999), edited by John Boli, offers insights into the evolution of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the International Standards Organization and industry-specific bodies. 

For a perspective on standards see Ken Alder's historical study The Measure of All Things (New York: Free Press 2002).

     resources

The Telecommunications Standards Portal (TSP) is an Australian site about international telecommunication standards, offering information about international telecommunications standard-setting activity. It is an initiative of the Australian Communications & Media Authority (ACMA), Australian Communications Industry Forum (ACIF), federal Department of Communications, Information Technology & the Arts (DCITA) and Standards Australia International (SAI).



   next page  (primers)