BBS in a Box 2/BBS in a box - Trilogy II.iso/Files/MUG News/EFF/open-platform-overview

Text File | 1992-07-14 | 16.2 KB | 332 lines | [TEXT/EDIT]

          THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION*

    AN OPEN PLATFORM FOR TELECOMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE**

The Infrastructure Challenge

Until now the telecommunications policy debate has largely been framed as a
struggle among entrenched commercial interests over who will control and
dominate markets such as information services, manufacturing, and long
distance service. It is time to refocus the debate by defining public goals
and enumerating specific steps to achieve them. Public policy should be
guided by an overarching social vision of what we call the National Public
Network, a vibrant web of information links to serve as the main channels
for commerce learning, education, politics, social welfare, and
entertainment in the future.  This network will include the voice telephone
service that we are already so familiar with, along with video images,
sound, and hybrid forms of communication.

In the view of EFF we need more than just safeguards, entry level tests or
new telephone company investment in information services and fiber optics.
In order to ensure a level playing field, encourage diversity, and
safeguard the freedom of users, we must build an open telecommunications
platform according to the following principles:

- establish an open platform for information services by speedy deployment
  of "Personal ISDN" nation-wide;

- ensure competition in local exchange services;

- promote First Amendment free expression by reaffirming the principles of
  common carriage;

- foster innovations that make networks and information services easy to
  use;

- protect personal privacy; and

- preserve and enhance socially equitable access to communications media.

Policy Recommendation

I. Create an Open Platform for Innovation in Information Services by
   Speedily Deploying a Nation-wide, Affordable "Personal ISDN".

To achieve the information diversity currently available in print and
broadcast media in the new digital forum, we must guarantee widespread
accessibility to a platform of basic services necessary for creating
information services of all kinds. Such a platform offers the dual benefit
of helping to creating a level playing field for competition in the
information services market, and stimulating the development of new
services beneficial to consumers.

Some suggest that the technology necessary to offer such a platform is far
off and would require billions of dollars of investment in fiber optics.
Actually, we have a platform that meets these criteria within our reach
now. Personal ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) could make voice,
data, video, high-speed fax, video, and multimedia services available TODAY
to telephone subscribers all around the country. ISDN as a key information
services technology is well-known in the communications industry, but its
potential as a universal platform is neither properly appreciated, nor
properly priced and positioned by the RBOCs as a basic service for
everyone, including consumers and small businesses.

The desktop personal computer represented a revolutionary platform for
innovation of the 1980's because it was designed according to the principle
of open architecture. This principle allowed numerous hardware and software
entrepreneurs to enter the computer industry. To bring the benefits of the
information age to the American public in the 1990's, we need to build an
open, ubiquitous digital communications platform for information services.
Personal ISDN can enable the citizen's access into the Information Age
because it has these key characteristics:

1. A Critical Mass of Features:

Existing ISDN standards, once fully implemented, offer switched,
high-speed, error-free data communications which can deliver a variety of
advanced information services. Many of the capabilities once thought to be
possible only on an all-fiber network, such as interactive full-motion
video can be achieved to a significant degree over Personal ISDN. This is
due to continuing revolutions in compression technology which make it is
possible to use copper wire-based ISDN to carry video signals to their
destination, at which point they can be uncompressed through use of
increasingly inexpensive processors, which are built-in to computers,
televisions, and other consumer electronic equipment.

2. Ubiquity:

To create a market for information services, everyone must be able to reach
information services. We must build the new public network by making it
easy for people to connect to it with a few simple decisions. Again, an
analogy to the personal computer market is helpful. Minicomputers and
mainframes were marketed to companies. Microcomputers (PC's) were marketed
to individuals. Personal ISDN-- which can be provided over the existing
copper plant that comprises today's public switched network -- can reach
into every home and every small business without laying a single mile of
fiber optic cable. Telephone company data indicates that over the next
three years majority of central office switches will be upgraded to the
requisite digital capability to handle ISDN.

3. Affordability:

Platform services, even if they are ubiquitous, are useless unless they are
also affordable to American consumers. Just as the voice telephone network
would be of little value if only a small fraction of the country could
afford to have a telephone in their home, a national information platform
will only achieve its full potential when a large majority of Americans can
afford access to it. All available information indicates that ISDN can be
priced as a basic service. The cost of carrying a digital ISDN call from
the customer to the local switch is just the same as an analog voice call
in the digital switching regime that ISDN pre-supposes. There are some
fixed investment costs still to be incurred to upgrade the nation's central
office switches in order to handle ISDN traffic, but commitments to these
investments are already largely made.

What is needed is to raise the floor by creating a new standard, minimum
platform for information exchange. ISDN must be re-positioned as a basic
service, available to consumers and small businesses. This service can be
the test bed for a whole new generation of information services which could
benefit the American public and level the competitive playing field.


II. Ensure Competition in Local Exchange Services

Many consumer and industry groups are concerned that as the modified final
judgement restrictions are lifted, the RBOCs will come to dominate the
design of the emerging National Public Network, shaping it more to
accommodate their business goals than the public interest. The bottleneck
that RBOCs have on local exchange services critical to information
providers can be minimized by unbundling these services and allowing
non-BOC providers to offer them in competition with BOC local exchange
companies.

Some suggest that an entry level test is necessary to guarantee that
alternative infrastructure is developed for information services delivery.
Alternative pathways are a useful and necessary part of our telecommunications
infrastructure, but we should not rely on them alone to level the information
services playing field. First and foremost we must find ways to open up the
existing public switched network to competition at all levels.  Competition
will promote innovation in the services on which information providers
rely, and help guarantee equal access to all local exchange facilities.

The post-divestiture phone system offers us a valuable lesson: a
telecommunications network can be managed effectively by separate
companies--even including bitter opponents like AT&T and MCI--as long as
they can connect equitably and seamlessly from the user's standpoint.
Together with the open platform offered by a Personal ISDN, unbundling and
expanded competition is a key to ensuring equitable access to local
exchange services needed for information service delivery.

III. Promote First Amendment Free Expression by Affirming the Principles of
     Common Carriage

In a society which relies more and more on electronic communications media
as its primary conduit for expression, full support for First Amendment
values requires extension of the common carrier principle to all of these
new media. Common carriers are companies which provide conduit services for
the general public. The common carrier's duties have evolved over hundreds
of years in the common law and later statutory provisions. The rules
governing their conduct can be roughly distilled in a few basic principles.
Common carriers have a duty to provide services in a non-discriminatory
manner at a fair price, interconnect with other carriers, and provide
adequate services. The communications carriers who make up the critical
elements of the public switched network -- local exchange companies and
inter-exchange companies -- should be subject to comprehensive common
carriage duties as described above. All communications carriers, however,
are not necessarily common carriers.

Unlike arrangements found in many countries, our communications infrastructure
is owned by private corporations instead of by the government. Therefore, a
legislatively imposed expanded duty of common carriage on public switched
telephone carriers is necessary to protect free expression effectively. A
telecommunications provider under a common carrier obligation would have to
carry any legal message regardless of its content whether it is voice,
data, images, or sound.


IV. Make the Network Simple to Use

One of the great virtues of today's public switched telephone network, from
a user's perspective, is that it operates according to patterns and
principles that are now intuitively obvious to almost everyone. As this
network grows beyond just voice services, information services that become
part of this network should reflect this same ease-of-use and accessibility.
The development of such standards and patterns for information services is
vital, not just because it helps makes the network easier to use, but also
because it ensures an open platform for information providers. However,
standards development will be ad hoc and even chaotic at first. Numerous
standards may be tried and found inadequate by users before a mature set of
standards emerges. Congress and government regulatory bodies may need to
set out the ground rules for standards planning in order to ensure that all
interested parties have an equal voice, and the resulting standards should
be closely analyzed to make sure that they reflect public needs. But,
direct government involvement in the process should be as limited as possible.

V. Protect Personal Privacy

As the NPN develops, there are threats to both communications privacy and
information privacy. First, electronic communications meant to be private
can be intercepted without the consent or even knowledge of the communicating
parties. The privacy of telephone conversations and electronic mail is
already protected by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. However,
communications in other media, such a cellular phone conversations, can be
intercepted using readily available technology by private third parties
without the knowledge or consent of the people involved. Second, as the
public switched telephone network is used for an increasing variety of
transactions, it will hold more personal information about consumers. We
need to give citizens greater control over information collected, stored,
and disseminated by telephone companies and information providers. As the
public outcry over Caller ID demonstrates, citizens want and deserve to
have adequate notice about what information is being collected and
disseminated by communications firms and must be able to exercise informed
consent before information collected for one purpose can be used for any
other purpose.

VI. Preserve and Enhance Socially Equitable Access to Communications Media

The principle of equitable access to basic services is an integral part of
nation's public switched telephone network. We must ensure that all Americans
have access to the growing information services market. Some paint a vision
of the future in which all citizens have access to education services such
as distance learning or on-line health care services. Neither market
competition nor lifting restrictions on telephone companies alone will
deliver these services. It is time for those who propose serving the
"information have nots" to admit that equity can not be achieved except by
legislative mandate and public funding.

Conclusion

The chance to influence the shape of a new medium usually arrives when it
is too late: when the medium is frozen in place. Today, because we are at
the cross-roads of telecommunications policy, and because of the unusual
awareness people have of its possibilities, there is a rare opportunity to
shape this new medium in the public interest, without sacrificing diversity
or financial return.

For a copy of the complete testimony on which this overview is based or for
more information please contact:

Mitchell Kapor, President
Electronic Frontier Foundation
155 Second St.
Cambridge, MA 02141
617-864-0665
[e-mail]

- or -

Daniel J. Weitzner
EFF Washington Office
666 Pennsylvania Ave, SE
Suite 303
Washington, DC 20003
212-544-9237
[e-mail]

* The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a public interest organization
established in 1990 to educate the public about the democratic potential of
new computer and communications technologies. EFF works to develop and seeks
to implement public policies to maximize freedom, competitiveness, and civil
liberty in the electronic social environments being created by these new
technologies.

** This overview is a summary of testimony presented by the Electronic
Frontier Foundation to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Subcommittee
on Telecommunications and Finance in hearings regarding Telecommunications
Infrastructure Legislation and Proposals, October 24, 1991. The testimony
was prepared by Mitchell Kapor in consultation with Jerry Berman, Director
of the ACLU Information Technology Project and Danny Weitzner. Many people
in the computer and networking community also contributed valuable comments
and suggestions.


How to Get Information via the Internet

1. "Open Platform Overview"

This is the document you are now reading, It summarizes our policy
recommendations for the creation of a ubiquitous, affordable, open
telecommunications platform based on ISDN. A slightly different version was
printed in EFFector 2.01. Additional copies may be obtained:

via electronic mail: send a message to [e-mail], any subject,
with body: send documents open-platform-overview

via anonymous ftp from eff.org:/pub/docs/open-platform-overview

2. "Testimony of Mitchell Kapor Before the House Subcommittee on
    Telecommunications and Finance Regarding Telecommunications
    Infrastructure Legislation and Proposals"

This is the complete testimony presented to Congress, which is the full text
from which the "Open Platform Overview" was prepared.

via electronic mail: send a message to [e-mail], any subject,
with body: send documents open-platform-testimony

via anonymous ftp from eff.org:/pub/docs/open-platform-testimony

3. EFFector Online

This is the regular newsletter of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. We
will continue to report progress on the Open Platform initiative here.

via electronic mail: send mail to [e-mail] requesting to be
put on the mailing list

via Usenet: comp.org.eff.news

4. IBT mailing list

The IBT (Internet Brain Trust) moderated mailing list is being organized as
a forum for discussion on the Open Platform. To join the list, please send
mail to [e-mail].

The IBT archive will be available via anonymous ftp from eff.org:/pub/ibt

(There will be separate files for each month, filenames YYYY-MM.)

5. General Information about the EFF, including membership information

via electronic mail: send mail to [e-mail], any subject, with
body: send EFF EFF.about

via anonymous ftp from eff.org:/pub/EFF/EFF.about

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a non-profit public interest
organization established in 1990 to educate the public about the democratic
potential of new computer and communications technologies. EFF works to
develop and seeks to implement public policies that maximize freedom,
competitiveness, and civil liberty in the electronic social environments
being created by these new technologies.