Three scenarios for future connectivity in Europe

The Rand Corporation think thank has a report featuring three scenarios on the future broadband/p2p infrastructure, commissioned by the EU:

* Trends in connectivity technologies and their socioeconomic impacts. Final report of the study: Policy Options for the Ubiquitous Internet Society. By: Jonathan Cave, Constantijn van Oranje-Nassau, Helen Rebecca Schindler, Ala’a Shehabi, Philipp-Bastian Brutscher, Neil Robinson

The three scenarios, starting pages 42+ are:

– The Borderless World of 2020, which assumes the continuation of current neoliberal globalization trends

– The Connecting World of 2020, a neo-Keynesian assumption of enlightened governments supporting broad deployment of infrastructure, and strong supra-regionalisation

– The Scattered World of 2020, failure of both market and state, leads to fragmentation and localized use of infrastructure

My own view is that as scenario one can’t happen because of ecological constraints, and two is increasingly unlikely because of current choices, that the third scenario is becoming more likely as the failure to reform economic structures become more dramatic.

I asked Sepp Hasslberger for extra commentary:

“It was interesting to read. My comment on it is that it is a very formal exercise that limits itself to more or less linear extrapolations from trends already visible at the moment the research was done. It is also constrained by a mind set that is typical of a large bureaucracy, in this case the EU Commission.

Consequently the recommendations are in line what the Commission wants to hear (increase competition, control the net, balance the players one against the other, intervene with suitable policy instruments, etc.)

I particularly felt that consumers (peers on the ground) are not considered as stakeholders but merely as a subject to be satisfied (granted access, satisfied by privacy provisions). This might change if we are successful in stimulating the construction of consumer-owned autonomous networks. As Marco Polverari, the Italian engineer who proposes to make such a network says, having consumer-owned networks would put consumers on the map as stakeholders to be reckoned with, rather than as sheep to be herded and protected.

I am also astonished that there is open talk of revising the end-to-end principle of the internet, and putting controls between the two end points of a connection. That would, I believe, destroy the dynamics of the net and degrade its usefulness to something close to the controlled mainstream media. And we know where that is headed.

All in all, an interesting report. It lacks however any creativity or vision. Rather than strengthening what made the internet successful, it proposes to destroy those values, while paying lip service to “openness”.

In my view, what is the central good point of the internet is the availability of an uncontrolled and uncontrollable means of communication between any of the participants. If controls are put in the middle of the communication line, we will be on our way to losing the benefits of open communication.”

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