What’s good for the Goose is good for the Gander

The news that Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, has resigned from the board of Apple Inc is generating a lot of headlines. Maybe Apple’s action in blocking access to Google Voice on its app store last week was the straw that broke the camel’s back. But then Apple has form in this area – last month the Palm Pre also got ‘disconnected’ from Apple’s iTunes store.

We also heard this week that Skype, now the world’s largest international phone company with 40+ million users may be turned off in a patent dispute between eBay (Skype’s current owners) and the original developers Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. Now maybe this is all posturing over the value of the potential IPO for Skype ( writes Martyn Warwick) but it and the Apple positioning open up some serious questions about governing the kind of interconnected “4G” world that we are entering.

The “4G” world relies on 3 key ingredients: true mobile broadband available 24X7 anywhere on the planet; super-powerful devices that combine the functions of handset and laptop; and a myriad of ‘cloud-based’ applications and data. This combination, seen in embryo format through the iPhone and 3G networks, will lead to fundamental changes in the way that people work, play, and access and store information. Over the next few years,  vast numbers of people will be reliant on this kind of approach for the way they work and live their lives.

In the good old days, the global phone network was the largest ‘machine’ that mankind had ever built – mostly provided by government monopolies for the ‘good’ of society. As this morphed into competitive business, layers of regulation covering universal service, prices controls, open access etc ensured that these vital services remained available to everyone with a high degree of reliability and certainty.

But in the 4G world, the comms part is only one piece of a 3 ring circus where, it seems from recent behaviour that large and powerful companies can act with impunity to chop off services just because they compete with another part of their empire’s business. So, the stakes get higher in that these kinds of services become vital to most people’s lives, yet they get run under a business model that would be very familiar to Al Capone!

The Net Neutrality debate is all about adding more controls and regulation onto the communications part of the triangle and often promoted by companies in the other 2 areas who seem to have little trouble acting in a discriminatory manner.  So what goes on? 

The rate of evolution of the communications and IT industries since deregulation has been phenomenal just as Adam Smith preached openness nearly 250 years ago: getting rid of barriers results in everyone benefitting. So let’s have a barrier free evolution to a 4G world for the benefit of everyone.  Let’s continue the drive to open; standards based structures with minimal interference from legislators and regulators. But at the same time let’s stamp hard on discriminatory behaviour through the courts to stop a few big players distorting the market. And if that’s good enough to regulate the software and device suppliers, surely it’s a sensible way to handle any discriminatory acts by the communications players rather than further weighing it down with more regulation like Net Neutrality.