Open Access News

[The University of Alaska is having trouble with the quality of its net-based videoconferences.] When [Curt Madison, director of the Center for Distance Education at Alaska's Fairbanks campus] complained to [broadband provider] General Communications, officials advised the university to buy the company's dedicated videoconference line. Mr. Madison says that option is too expensive, and besides, he says, he shouldn't have to pay extra to get reliable service. Dana L. Tindall, a senior vice president of the company, offers an airline analogy: "If you don't want to ride on coach, and you want to have a seating assignment, you have to pay a little bit more." Mr. Madison worries that the company's preferential treatment of its own videoconference service "is a harbinger of what we could face, as [broadband] carriers become vendors of programming and seek competitive advantage." Many academic leaders share his concern. Telephone and cable companies, the officials say, could soon thwart colleges' attempts to deliver education and collaborate on research over the Internet. Colleges are pressing Congress to force telecommunications companies to keep their broadband pipes open to any kind of Web content or network application — even those that compete with the companies' own offerings — and to prohibit the companies from favoring certain types of network traffic with fast-lane delivery to people's computers....[A]cademic leaders say that faster service for some Web sites means slower and less reliable service for others, since network capacity, known as bandwidth, is limited....

Many college presidents find themselves caught in the middle of the debate, confides a college lobbyist who asked not to be identified. On the one hand, they want to maintain good ties with AT&T, Verizon, and other broadband carriers because in many cases, they provide communication services to campuses. Some college presidents may even serve on the companies' boards. On the other hand, the presidents do not want their distance-learning and research programs to suffer because of a tiered Internet that would cause their institutions to pay more than they can afford for reliable, fast Internet service. Despite college presidents' reluctance to take a stand, several higher-education groups in Washington are promoting legislation to require telephone and cable companies to operate their networks in a nondiscriminatory way....Nils Hasselmo, then president of the Association of American Universities, signed the [pro-neutrality] March letter [drafted by Educause's Network Policy Council], on behalf of his group, the American Council on Education, the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, Educause, and Internet2. About two weeks later, the coalition sent a similar letter to the Republican chairman and ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, before it took up the issue. Academic-library groups support network neutrality, too. The American Library Association and the Association of Research Libraries, as well as Educause, are part of a diverse group calling itself the SavetheInternet.com Coalition. The coalition announced last week that it was planning a rally on Capitol Hill and was urging its members to write letters to newspapers and to contact lawmakers. Two law professors — Lawrence Lessig, of Stanford University, and Tim Wu, of Columbia University, both of whom popularized the term "network neutrality" — are also part of the coalition.