Category Archives: OII

“Digital Britain” – where’s real universal access?

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I’ve finally had a chance to read the interim “Digital Britain” report prepared by Simon Carter, the Minister for Communications, Technology and Broadcasting.  The report surveys a vast swathe of issues including copyright, radio spectrum reform, and television.  I was most interested in what it had to say about responsibilities for providing next generation (higher speed, fibre or 4G broadband) access, universal service, and digital inclusion.

Next generation access (NGA) is important because most of Britain’s internet traffic currently runs on copper. Broadband on copper can be slow, and congested. The telecom operators have not invested in fibre in many parts of the country, and that is part of the rationale for spurring investment in NGA.  But the report stays far, far away from any suggestion that rural or deprived areas would benefit:

Competing NGA infrastructures can drive down prices. But they can also drive
availability, particularly as mobile operators seeks to offer users the additional benefits
of mobility at increasingly higher speeds, and make available national offers which
fixed line players have to counter.

If these investments are carried to completion, we can reasonably expect at least half
of the UK population to have access to NGA services and possibly a periphery around
that- perhaps as much as 60 per cent or even more. (p.18)

Hmm, half the population?  As for the actual implementation plans, the report’s Actions mainly concern how to support a market-driven approach.  There is mention of the Community Broadband Network‘s fibre projects, and the creation of an umbrella group to provide technical support to community networks.  This will certainly help community networks get access to technical help, but as lots of research has already shown, there is no “out of the box” recipe for a successful community network.  They often provide benefits beyond connectivity in “market failure” environments.  Ofcom’s Consumer Panel recently published a report describing almost forty community projects aimed at developing local NGA.

So is everyone going to get universal NGA?  Probably not.  The report suggests that there will be a universal service guarantee – but it’s to provide 2.0Mb/second – by 2012.  With all this talk of next-generation networks, that seems a little bit like an advance apology for selling short some parts of the country.  The justification for the 2Mb level is based on British Telecom’s current service level, which leaves 1.75 million people unserved by 2Mb coverage.

All of this suggests a certain level of caution and “letting the market decide.”  But this could mean that Britain doesn’t ultimately capitalize on its potential.  There’s already been lots of criticism of the plan, and I agree that it doesn’t propose clear strategies, instead proposing the creation of “Task Forces” “Agencies” and “Umbrella Bodies.”  The Obama government has made investment in broadband infrastructure a key part of its economic recovery plans.  We should expect a bit more audacity – and forethought – from Carter and the British government.

Civil liberties in the network society

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In yesterday’s post I reflected on how battles for civil liberties were ways for people with less power to try and gain more power.  This is a fairly mainstream sociological perspective on power and the reasons that people engage in collective action. Today I’m going to ask how this changes in a network society.  The theorist of social movements Alberto Melucci writes in his book Challenging Codes that, “a social movement is an actor engaged in a conflict directly or indirectly affecting the distribution of power within a society.”  But I’d like to know:  is there some finite amount of power?  If so, where are the places where it is most concentrated?  What are today’s most significant struggles?

If we think of our society as being characterized by 1.  relationships structured by/through networked forms and networked infrastructures and 2. the high value placed on information, then it is easier to see why today’s struggles over power involve things like media reform and privacy.  Colin Bennett (among other privacy advocates) looks at how privacy is framed as a civil liberties issue.  He writes in The Privacy Advocates that “the protection of privacy has always featured prominently within the agendas of civil liberties organizations, historically concerned with the legitimate boundaries between the individual and state and with the protection of citizens from abuses of power” (p. 35).  One limitation of this perspective, as Bennet notes, is that it focuses on individual rights rather than collective (civil) rights.  We could imagine this perspective as a shield preventing the powerful state from abusing the powerless individual.

Maybe its possible to think of the individual – or the collective – as having power that can be disruptive.  Manuel Castells argues that any exercise of power also produces “counter-power.”  Any oppression produces resistance.  For example, the consolidation of global capital and information that the internet made possible was balanced out by the development of new social movements that opposed that power using the tools provided (the internet, global interaction).  Now that more of society can be thought of as working like a network, this power/counterpower relationship is developing.  Some of the important questions are:  who figures out how networks of influence and networks of infrastructure are going to operate?  Who makes the rules?

Developing counter-power that restructures how networks work is a good way of framing why media reform has become a big issue — and even why technical standards and protocols are becoming objects of political discussion.  But one of the big challenges of understanding power – and civil liberties – in a network society is actually determining where counterpower or resistance should be directed.  Castells claims that a pressing question is: “against whom do I revolt”?

This is exactly why issues of privacy and media reform are becoming more thorny.  It’s not simply a question of shielding individuals from the burly oppression of the state.  Many forms of power are ways of controlling our uncertainty about the world, and even a surveillance state can do that (the argument for surveillance cameras is often that they make people safer, as everyone is being watched).  It’s a question of determining *where* abuses of power come from -in the multi-layered networks of infrastructure, content, finance, and politics – and *how* to use the same networks to disconnect or route around those abuses.

On Communication as a Right

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My US-based colleague Sascha Meinrath recently published an editorial in the Guardian arguing that universal internet connectivity should become part of a new social contract for the United States. He argues that connectivity, like public safety and public space, should be available to all. After all, parks and other public services are freely available to US citizens, and internet infrastructure is equally important.

The comments on the story by British readers were very revealing about the way people think about public services. One commenter noted that parks were not freely accessible, as due to fears of pedophilia single childless adults were interrogated by park staff. Another compared the internet to a shopping mall – since it is primarily commercial, why provide public support?

These comments helped me to situate the UK’s seeming shortage of community broadband projects (I’m still looking for more of them!). I am still surprised to see how many “public” spaces are privatized (including parks that belong to the Royals). Meanwhile, the perceived erosion of basic public services in the UK seems to be making citizens wary of arguing for connectivity as public service, or – by extension – communication as a right.

The right to speak and to express opinions is the foundation of democracy. In an age when network infrastructure supports many of the ways we express these opinions publicly, equal access must be provided to everyone. This does not supercede the importance of clean water, shelter, and health care. It does ensure that we are free to speak, listen, and dissent – publicly.

YouTube’s Online Symphony Orchestra

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I’m really excited about YouTube’s new project: an online symphony orchestra! Composer Tan Dun has written an Internet Symphony meant to be played by all the usual orchestra instruments – and any other instruments that participants want to play. It will be collaboratively performed online. You can upload sheet music, watch masterclasses on your instrument from London Symphony Orchestra players, get some video help from Tan Dun as conductor, and then upload audition videos. Chosen performers will play in the flesh at Carnegie Hall.

It is almost (but not quite) enough to make me want to bring my violin out of hibernation.

Slow Food meets Community Broadband

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Michael Pollan’s open letter to the next American president suggests that the North American industrial food production system should return to regionalism, year-round planting, and small farms.

Pollan has created a framework for local farming and food distribution that advocates for “small is beautiful” local agriculture (including a proposed White House Victory Garden) that avoids simply assuming that local food or small scale distribution is inherently better. There is no use, he argues, for calling for local distribution of more diverse crops if grain elevators will only accept corn and soy. A return to localism should happen because it is economically and socially viable, and would help the US disconnect food production from a dependence on foreign oil.

Many people I know from CWN and media reform advocacy would make a similar argument about the necessity for a return to localism in communications ownership. There are some parallels between the two areas: local media can nourish geographically close areas by presenting local stories, distributing local information, and creating opportunities for people living close to each other to learn about one another. Local evening newscasts on a broadcast television channel provided skilled employment as well as local information: but as media ownership consolidated, many local newscasts have been eliminated. Local radio funding has been cut too, as North American stations invest in satellite radio

So should we have a local internet? In the 1990s the answer to this question would have been yes, and the strategy the creation of community networks, which were the first ways for people without university affiliations to get online. These FreeNets, including the National Capital FreeNet in Ottawa, loaded up the front ends of their systems with local information, but what they did best was get people to go online . . .where . . . they met a lot of people who didn’t live in their local areas.

Then researchers started talking about the internet as a global utopia – Manuel Castells famously claimed that we were leaving behind a “space of places” and moving into a “space of flows.” Research in “virtual communities” blossomed. It seemed that a local internet was mostly a portal to a global world, and that communities and social networks would become dis-integrated from the local. The emotional argument might go this way: as we eat delicious berries out of season, trucked across the country, we watch YouTube videos instead of the local news.

But the internet is a local infrastructure: the local loop controls the speed of access to broadband. Someone must invest in this, and here is where community networking (reinvented as community wireless networking) comes in: WiFi is cheap, and local people can thus own the last mile, whether through their governments or through other non-profit or community organizations. The question is, should they? Unlike food, digital communications don’t absorb energy as they travel between places, and people maintain relationships with people from all over the world, as well as getting access to media from all over the world.

But people still live in places, and their lives are influenced by local policies, cultures, and contexts – not to mention media habits. My thesis case studies suggest that people most often use local WiFi networks to get their e-mail and to check the weather or the local news. It is impossible to return to a media world in which each small town has no idea of the big world issues. Finance, culture, and information flow too smoothly for this, and the disadvantages of being disconnected from this flow are still too great. Still, I believe that it is very likely that the next ten years will see us travel less, get our food from closer to where we live, and spend more time in local areas. If anything, this supports local investment in both communication infrastructure and in local media.

Local ownership and control of communications infrastructure can ensure that towns, cities, or neighbourhoods are not left out of the continuing global exchange of information. However, using community networks just to get people online is not the whole story – it is like investing in grain elevators for only one type of crop. If a more local world is coming (and it is, based on previous economic downturns), governments and organizations also need to invest in community media that will inspire local talent, provide employment, and help culture, creativity and innovation to strengthen.