What to Do about Dominant Platforms?

Big digital platforms, especially Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter, are facing growing scrutiny about monopoly power and censorship. Consider the matter of political censorship, complaints which are growing louder.

Traditionally, the right of free speech, as enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. constitution, protects speakers from government censorship, but only government action. There is a long legal history that extended First Amendment protections to new electronic media.

The internet, though, and particularly the rise of social media platforms, seems to raise entirely new questions, such as whether free speech rights can, or ought to, be extended to protect citizens from censorship by private corporations. That is almost entirely new ground, and up to this point, the right of free speech does not exist on any social platform in the United States. 

But some believe the traditional right of free speech, protecting citizens from government censorship, should be expanded in an era where “certain powerful private entities—particularly social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and others—can limit, control, and censor speech as much or more than governmental entities,” argues David L. Hudson Jr., Justice Robert H. Jackson Legal Fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

The issue is whether it is possible to enlarge the space within which constitutional protections on free speech are expanded, yet also avoid damage to private property rights of platforms. And that is the issue. It is not clear that regulation can do so, whether the issue is a remedy for business monopoly or the promotion of free speech. 

You might think the simplest answer is to simply allow people to speak their minds, with the exceptions of harassment and intimidation, threats of violence or promotion of criminal acts. But therein lies the problem, given the aggressively uncivil behavior one now sees on social media.  

What one speaker sees as the free expression of ideas will be seen as aggression and threat from another. Some 30 years ago this was not really a problem. People were simply more polite. But it is hard to mandate polite behavior. 

Many solutions seem to require “more regulation of platforms” which tends to mean “less freedom” for platforms, if arguably in pursuit of “more freedom” for speakers. And that raises an old issue: “who” has the right of free speech and its benefits, the speaker or the reader or listener. 

The U.S. Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, provided that “Congress shall make no law” prohibiting the free exercise of speech or the press. Note the language, which protects people as speakers and the “press” as a speaker from government restriction. 

Later broadcast media regulations sometimes shifted the focus a bit to the rights of listeners or viewers, rather than speakers. Generally speaking, however, the protected right is held by “speakers,” not “audiences.” 

Perhaps the seminal case was Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC (395 U.S. 367, 393 (1969), which allowed some content regulation of broadcasting for reasons of promoting the public interest. The point is that speaker rights were somewhat subordinated to the rights of viewers and listeners (the public interest). 

Complicating matters further is the issue of “who” the speaker is, in the context of a social media site or business: the platform or the users of the platform. Up to this point, it is the rights of the platform as “the speaker” which have been upheld, even if a platform supposedly is a neutral matchmaker between users who might, arguably, be considered the actual “speakers.”

The approach prioritizing the rights of audiences (listeners, readers, hearers) is exemplified by Alexander Meiklejohn’s book Free Speech and Its Relation to Self-Government, in which he says “what is essential is not that everyone shall speak, but that everything worth saying shall be said.”

All that assumes a singular public interest could even be identified.

It will not be easy to create a workable framework that expands the realm within which free speech protections exist on platforms, as the temptation will be to limit platform freedom to create more freedom of speech for users of platforms. But one philosophical choice might have to be made.

Is it the platform which has the right of free speech or is it platform users who have that right? And even if it is determined that platform users have the right, is it the speakers or the viewers, readers and listeners whose rights are to be protected?

Beyond all that, how algorithms or systems can be designed to accomplish, in neutral fashion, any of those goals also remains an issue.

Big and Permanent Changes in Enterprise IT Priorities Post Covid?

With the caveat that intentions often do not match actual behavior, large enterprise professionals who are heavy cloud computing customers have post-Covid-19 priorities that have changed from pre-Covid levels. You would not be surprised if effort to support remote work had increased, for example. 

But the differences, while showing some shifts, do not appear to have changed key priorities, or even the relative importance of various objectives. And since budgets and effort are essentially a zero-sum game, increased effort in some areas is matched by decreased effort in other areas. 

source: Second Watch

The survey included 100-plus cloud-focused information technology directors at companies with at least $500 million in annual sales and IT budgets of at least $50 million per year, from many industries including technology, financial services, manufacturing, retail, oil and gas, life sciences, consumer packaged goods and media and entertainment, all using at least two different cloud platforms. 

The point is simply that post-Covid behavior might not change as much as many now anticipate.

No "New Normal" for 5G Searches

One frequently hears these days that a “new normal” has been created by the Covid-19 pandemic; that “nothing will be the same” afterwards. That is not to deny either a “temporary” change in behavior nor a step change in many aspects of life and business, where it comes to underlying trends. 

We incontestably are behaving in different ways, partly the result of government mandates which are expected to be temporary. What happens after the pandemic is the issue. We should certainly expect a reversion to mean. Whatever trends were in place before the pandemic will reassert themselves, albeit from a higher level in many cases.

But that might not mean the rate of change changes very much. In fact, one might argue we already have seen this. This is a graph of Google searches for “5G.” Note the spike. That happened in March 2020 as many U.S. locations went into work-from-home and stay-home-from-school rules. 

We have to guess at why the surge in searches happened, then so quickly receded, but a reasonable guess is that people were looking for remote work support solutions. But the spike only lasted from the end of March to mid-April. Then interest backed off to levels higher than before, but on the prior trend line. 

As hard as it might be to envision, that is likely to happen with many business, economic and personal trends, post-pandemic, and after a few years. Consider “remote work.”

In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, statistics on remote work are impressive enough to convince many observers that a fundamental and permanent shift has been made. We will know in five years whether that is an accurate assessment, but we also have to remember that “remote work” includes many disparate activities, many of which do not substantially affect the amount of time people actually spend at work places. 

Work from home statistics often include actions such as “taking home some work from the office” (ranging from reading documents to correspondence management), working while traveling on business, unscheduled and episodic work from home, routine and planned work from home as well as permanent, full-time remote office or at-home workspaces.

Long-term trends in office space requirements, for example, typically depend on the amount of full-time, permanent basing at home locations, as well as permanent work-at-home for days per week or month. 

One issue is how many jobs theoretically could be done entirely from home. “We estimate that 56 percent of the U.S. workforce holds a job that is compatible (at least partially) with remote work,” say researchers at Global Workplace Analytics. That noted, pre-Covid-19, “only 3.6 percent of the employee workforce works at home half-time or more, the firm notes. 

Using every definition of work from home, including casual “take work home with you,” Gallup data from 2016 shows that 43 percent of the workforce works at home at least some of the time. So much hinges on the shift of the workforce to work from home at least 50 percent of the time.

 source: Global Workplace Analytics

How Much More Legacy Services Revenue Growth Remains?

How much revenue growth is possible in telecom markets across the globe, looking at fixed and mobile connectivity, entertainment video and fixed-mobile convergence?

A.T. Kearney believes that in Western Europe, there is room to grow revenues 25 percent. In  Eastern Europe about 10 percent growth in legacy services remains. In Russia there is about six percent upside remaining.

In the United States there is about eight percent opportunity remaining. In Asian Pacific countries there is about 11 percent more upside. 

Beyond that, much hinges, apparently, on the ability to create video, audio, content or connected device businesses, in most of those markets. Upside in new businesses such as those are most limited in Western Europe and the United States, both mature markets. 

source: A.T. Kearney

Also, the U.S. market also faces the challenge of high spending on connected services, possibly indicating that much of the opportunity already has been seized (not adjusting for purchasing power parity, a way of normalizing spending across countries). 

Most of the potential future growth, in AT. Kearney’s view, will come from other roles in the connected services ecosystem, in such areas as online media, entertain­ment services and connected devices. 

The rub is such moves imply that firms must compete with firms already possessing significant advantages. In a U.S. context, for example, that could mean taking on Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Google and others. In other countries it means taking on media giants. 

And that might be the greatest challenge of all, as most apps or services requiring use of connectivity can be created and delivered without the permission of the internet service provider. 

source: A.T. Kearney

“In every region of the world, video-on-demand services generate the largest chunk of digital services spend,” the firm argues. “Music and online gaming tend to be the next biggest generators of revenue.”

Globally, consumers spend an average of €8 per month on video-on-demand, €4 per month on music, and €4 on gaming, for example. In absolute terms, people in the United States and Western Europe spend the most on video-on-demand services at €14 and €10 per month respectively, well ahead of spending on music, gaming, and other services. In Asia Pacific, spending on digital services is more evenly spread across categories. 

source: A.T. Kearney

But some mobile service providers--including Verizon and T-Mobile, believe 5G gives them an opportunity to take existing market share from incumbent suppliers. Verizon, for example, will offer a 5G fixed wireless home broadband service that competes with Charter Communications and Comcast offers. 

Company	Price per Month	Download Speed in Megabits Per Second	Contract?
Charter Communications	$49.99	100 mbps	1-year contract required
Comcast	$49.99	200 mbps	1-year contract required
Verizon	$50	300 mbps	No contract

source: Motley Fool 

Those posted prices are for Verizon wireless customers. Others will pay $70 a month. There are other subtleties, though. The cable companies require customers to rent home equipment, generally adding about $10 a month in extra fees, and often require contracts as well, so the recurring cost is very close, even for non-Verizon mobile customers. 

Still, if Verizon were able to cross-sell even 10 percent of its mobile customers 5G Home at $50 per month, that would generate $5.6 billion in annual revenue for the company. That is a good example of how a big telco can capture that eight percent growth remaining in the legacy business.

What Verizon does next is the issue, as it seems to be approaching the limits of revenue growth from legacy services.

Why U.S. Ranks 10th to 20th Globally for Fixed Network Performance, and Has Since the Days of Voice

One of the most-recurring stories about U.S. communications infrastructure deployment, app use or performance is that it “lags” what other countries achieve, especially in the early days of deployment, but virtually always even after “full deployment.” That might seem curious, but is well attested, historically. 

A recent set of tests by M-Lab, for example, found the United States ranks in spot 20 of nations or city state access speeds, using the M-Labs methodology, which tests device speeds, not router speeds, typically based on use of a Wi-Fi connection. 

Position Country

1 Liechtenstein

2 Jersey

3 Andorra

4 Gibraltar

5 Luxembourg

6 Iceland

7 Switzerland

8 Hong Kong

9 Monaco

10 Hungary

11 Netherlands

12 Aruba

13 Malta

14 Denmark

15 Aland Islands

16 Sweden

17 Bermuda

18 Singapore

19 Slovak Republic

20 United States

source: Cable.co.uk

That is not an unusual position for U.S. performance. Consider voice adoption, where the best the United States ever ranked was about 15th globally, for teledensity (people provided with phone service). 

A couple of issues are worth keeping in mind. First, large countries always move slower than small countries or city-states, simply because construction of networks takes time and lots of capital. That explains the deployment gap, early on in the life cycle of any next-generation network. 

The other mostly unmentioned issue is geography and density. We often “forget” that six percent of the U.S. landmass is where most people live. About 94 percent of the land mass is unpopulated or lightly populated. 

And rural areas present the greatest challenge for deployment of communications facilities, or use of apps that require such facilities. That large expanse of unpopulated land also means there are constraints on the viability of fixed and mobile network coverage. Up to this point, only satellite coverage has made economic sense for very-large portions of the landmass. 

Simply, where facilities cannot be built and recover the investments, those investments are made only when subsidies are sufficient to reach breakeven or slightly better. 

The bottom line is that it is quite typical for U.S. performance for almost any important new infrastructure-related technology to lag other nations. It never matters, in the end. 

Eventually, the U.S. ranks somewhere between 10th and 20th on any given measure of technology adoption. That has been the pattern since the time of analog voice.

Wi-Fi Causes Lower Speed Test Results

Widespread use of Wi-Fi around the world now affects reporting of speed tests, which often are taken by devices that are connected by Wi-Fi. That results in lower measured speeds, compared to tests of the access connection to the router.

Methodology matters. A single speed test “is not a direct measure of the maximum speed available to a household router,” says M-Lab. It typically is the speed obtained by a single device connected using Wi-Fi, which normally means a lower speed than supplied to a device connected by a cable. So M-Lab says its own speed tests are best understood as the speeds end users actually experience on their devices, not the speed obtained by the router. 

Also, speed test data usually has a negativity bias. People are more likely to test when they experience a problem. This also helps to explain why speed test averages are lower than people might expect. 

That noted, speed tests seem to show that a number of smaller countries have been able to upgrade their networks faster than larger countries. That makes sense, as a practical matter. Since new networks have to be constructed, smaller areas can be upgraded faster than continent-sized areas, for example. 

What the M-Lab tests do not show as well are the potential impacts of coming cable TV operator cable modem advances such as DOCSIS 4, which will, in principle, support speeds up to 10 Gbps. Nearly all the tests conducted by M-Labs use traditional telco connections, including fiber to home and other connections. 

The United States shows up in spot 20 of nations or city state access speeds, using the M-Labs methodology.

What Happens to Bandwidth Growth after Pandemic?

Covid-19 traffic growth ”is largely a one-off phenomenon” say researchers at TeleGeography, after interviewing dozens of capacity executives. If capacity suppliers really expected a permanent increase in demand or rates of growth, they would also be changing their capacity-expansion plans. They are not. 

That might come as a surprise, given the 25-percent to 40-percent boost in traffic caused by stay-at-home policies. 

To be clear, what TeleGeography argues is that the temporary change in bandwidth demand caused by stay-at-home policies will not persist. Usage levels will return to prior pre-pandemic patterns. 

Many argue that “Covid caused a year’s worth of change in a month.” But that is not the same as arguing that the rate of change is permanently altered. Instead, consumption patterns suddenly grew to levels not anticipated for a year or so in the future. As shown below, there was a step change, with long-term trends intact. 

source: Chief Martec

But TeleGeography implies that the capacity spike will not persist. It is not a permanent change in growth, but a one-time spike in usage that might well return to prior levels. In other words, even the present higher levels of usage will continue. 

“Initial evidence suggests that the spike in the rate of bandwidth and traffic growth from the pandemic may be a one-time event” and will “return to typical rates of growth,” TeleGeography says. “Operators we spoke to indicated they were not making major upward adjustments to their demand forecasts due to Covid-19.”

To be sure, that could be interpreted as meaning the former rates of growth will reassert themselves. The possibilities include a return to former--and lower--levels of consumption. 

Another possibility is a return to the underlying long-term rate of change, but from a higher point than expected. In either case, prior assumptions about capacity growth seem to be unaffected. Capacity suppliers are not changing their original, pre-pandemic forecasts. 

That implies a belief that the spike in demand is temporary, and will not persist. Once people are able to go back to work and school, the “new” demand drivers will largely dissipate.