Lessig in Wired: Fiber to the People

For a long time now, the FCC has been pushing the idea that ownership matters. In the past four years, it has relaxed common-carrier-like regulations on cable and telecom providers on the theory that otherwise these companies won’t have enough incentives to deploy broadband networks. Common-carrier regulations, this view fears, would transform IP traffic into a commodity. And capital markets aren’t eager to fund commodity infrastructures.

That might be right about cable and telecom companies. Freeing AOL and Comcast from some regulation might be the only way they could afford to deploy high-speed access. But it doesn’t follow that AOL and Comcast are the most efficient providers of high-speed network access. They might not want to be in a commodity business, but commodities are precisely the efficiencies that drive economies. And as more firms persuade more municipalities to develop competing high-speed networks, then we might learn again why GM doesn’t own the highways, and why neither cable nor telecom companies should own IP access.

I have this irrational attraction for a model where connectivity is a public utility. It bugs me: I don’t think I’m able to see both sides of the debate equally well. What are the weaker points of this commodity model?

[via Lessig’s news blog ]