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Trains on Tracks v. Cars on Highways: Closed v. Open

A long, long time ago, the national railroad system would pass for High Technology. Railroads were king. In time, regulatory agencies were formed by governments to control the market power of these monopolies. Location of tracks meant everything - towns that were passed up saw commercial potential wither.

When the new technologies of the Automobile Age came along, startups formed to work out the kinks. But as the industry matured, companies multiplied, and startups turned into major employers, things changed. The Model T became a transportation option for the masses, and the owners and drivers of all those cars and soon, all those trucks, demanded ever better paved roads and highways.

Slowly but surely, the open system of cars & highways began to replace the closed system of trains and tracks as the preferred human transportation model, except in dense corridors, where commuter trains persist today. But railroads continued to be an option for moving freight cheaply, even as the trucking industry rose up.

Multimodal transportation evolved and these closed and open systems found ways to coexist, sometimes because of government efforts and controls, but often despite government management.

Our history of physical transportation of atoms and molecules in our rail and road networks has lessons to teach us if we will listen. When we look at information transportation of bits and bytes in our telecommunication systems, we should think about how things transpired with transportation systems.

When it came to making decisions on transporting physical material, whether in the form of raw commodities, manufactured products in boxes or real-live human beings, those deciding took advantage of multiple options that made the most sense for their priorities - choice was good. Ships and airplanes today complete the system, offering tremendous flexibility for businesses and consumers. We see this choice as a natural, and wouldn't have it any other way.

But when it comes to telecommunications, it's as if our brains have been put on hold. Information material in the form of information bits, voice bits, or video bits is still treated as if it must flow over the closed networks of the big telecom provider, on their terms and conditions. (Not to leave Big Cable and Big Football out, in a true, Open System, I don't think that I would have missed watching the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys, the way I missed them this week.)

The prevailing sentiment and conventional wisdom still assumes that the large closed networks of Big Telecom and Big Wireless, often one and the same - collectively, the "railroads" of today - are the only options that matter. The bottom line for me is this:

We have a collective lack of imagination when it comes to broadband, IP applications, and digital content. We're stuck with Old World thinking in a New World.

Still, for the most part, those who trumpet Verizon, AT&T, and the rest may be right, at least for now, that is. Alternatives to conventional broadband are still so new and so small as to get little attention.

The winds of change are in the air, however, and the potential of Open Networks, like water on a stone, is having an inexorable effect on the Status Quo. Steeped in the Gospel of Open Networks that drives the Internet, Google has set its calculating eye on telecommunications, specifically, .the upcoming FCC 700 MHz spectrum auction in February.

It's big news this week, then, the recent steps that Verizon took to allow handset makers to interface in new ways with their network. Is this a legitimate start of a trend to open up their network? Don't know that, but apparently it's big enough news to get an editorial mention in the New York Times.

There is a deep common sense behind the openness that is being forced on the world of mobile technology providers. If nothing else, it unleashes the twin powers of consumer choice and consumer desire. It gets carriers out of the business of telling us what tools we should want on our cellphones, and it frees cellphone manufacturers from the restrictions placed upon them by the carriers. The logical end of mobile openness is a set of shared, even convergent standards that may mean faster communication for consumers using any phone, any software, and any carrier. And that is where the real revolution in mobile computing will begin. A Cellular Sea Change

But the potential of the Open Network still has a long way to go to impress those who control large telecommunication companies. It took a lot to get Verizon to this step, most especially, an FCC listening to some of the arguments of Google. Note the language in the editorial above, "openness that is being forced on the world of mobile technology providers." Like the Times, I'm not convinced that their heart is really in it, not yet. Just look at what it took to get them to go this far, and also see how their less progressive cousin, ATT, views such moves.

Neither was Stephenson [AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson] willing to give ground when asked about Verizon Wireless's recently announced plans to open its network, divorcing the handset from any particular service. (See Verizon Tears Down the 'Walled Garden' .)

"I thought it was overblown," he said of the reaction to Verizon's announcement. "The industry's headed that way, right? The wire line network, over time, became open-access."

Stephenson noted during the talk that open networks would emerge if the market demanded it - but later refused to acknowledge Verizon's move as evidence that the market was demanding anything. After the talk, he told Light Reading that AT&T hasn't seen any demand for an arrangement like Verizon's.

In fact, AT&T's network is as "open" as they come, Stephenson claimed. "You can take a Nokia Corp. phone and connect it to our network, just put in your own SIM [subscriber identity module] card. We don't see customers do that. They want the phone subsidized."

Applications for AT&T's wireless network can be written in Java, he added, citing that as further evidence of the network's openness.

Stephenson likewise downplayed Google's Android platform, which aims to provide an open-source operating system and development environment for mobile devices. (See Google Makes Mobile Move, Google: Android's Not Evil, and Analysts: Google Plans Lack Substance.)

"Here are all these people that make large, carrier-class operating systems. And here's a new entrant who's never built a carrier-class operating system." Still, he said, AT&T will consider using Android if customers demand it. AT&T Parties Like It's 1999

While I have no crystal ball, I suspect that bigger changes are underway than we can even imagine right now. For instance, when I hear AT&T's Stephenson deny the significant changes we all see happening, using words like "carrier class," I can't help but hear the dismissive tone of the railroad titans of 100 years ago, as they derided the potential of the rickety Model Ts when compared to their mighty locomotives.

The upcoming 700 MHz spectrum auction has brought pressure to bear on the nation's communication ecosystem, pressure I think that neither the FCC, AT&T nor Verizon quite anticipated. We'll know in early February whether Google's impact will extend beyond this current phase as the owner of new spectrum, or if their primary impact will have been to bring in pressure from the outside to force change, at least temporarily.

Only time will tell how long established firms like AT&T can hold on to what they have; they have so much going for them nowadays. But the evolution of physical transportation showed us that Open has advantages that Closed lacks, and also, that Open and Closed can ultimately coexist in an efficient system. It need not be a choice of Either/Or, but more, a question of ever greater choices and lower costs. For all that history shows us, why should we continue to deny the potential in change?

If we had the same attitude back then about the Open Network of automobiles and roads that we have today about a possible Open Network made up of alternatives to phones and telecom networks, I'd be rushing out the door right now to run to the station, because I had a train to catch and I had to keep to their schedule, rather than getting in my car and driving away, whenever and wherever I damn well please....

Please tell me what makes Telecommunications so different from Transportation? Other than the fact that we have very powerful telecom companies who slow change down, that is, to maintain their control until they are forced to accept change, bit by bit...

Posted on December 01, 2007 at 12:48 PM

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