Landline, Fiber, and Long-Haul in a P2P Internet

Someone asked me recently what place existing wired networks would have in my vision of a free, universal wireless communication service. It’s a very pertinent question. While I believe that this new communication service will unchain the individual from a myriad of unnecessary, overpriced, and exploitative “service provider” bills for telephone, cellular, internet, and cable bills, it won’t be a complete replacement for the existing Internet infrastructure, but a new layer, like the Internet laid on top of telephone and cable systems.

Universal wireless access will certainly reduce overall costs to use the Internet for almost everyone, and negate the question of the last mile; but wireless services may not be the answer for long-distance communication or extremely large data transfers. While I can conceive of ways to address this, such as using Ham-style reflection off the ionosphere for long-distance wireless, in the end what will be most popular is what is most economical for all parties, and in many cases what is most economical will be to use the existing infrastructure.

Most phone calls, emails, and data transfers happen on a local scope – most people you call and email are within a reasonably sized radius of you, and most files that you want likely have a copy within that same radius. Using a free wireless comm service is the best option when you’re calling a coworker that’s in the same building, or a friend who’s down the block, or a pizza place a mile away, but it’s probably not the best option if you want to have a video conference with people halfway across the nation, or transfer terabytes of telescope data from Hawaii to Michigan.

Thus I think it’s likely that many people will use a data service provider for long-distance or large-file transmissions, but not on a contractual basis, and with a greatly diminished regularity. Removing the necessity of a direct connection and breaking the gates of access will open the market for competition, so you can shop around for the best plan that fits you; while the service providers will have less network load, require fewer capacity upgrades, and experience greater competition, so their prices will drop. I think we will see the end of the false discrimination between data types and a recognition that all information networks, whether built to carry cable TV, telephone calls, or what have you are all just generalized data networks.

Even so, it will be your choice if you use a service provider or the universal system. You could still use any of the wired services wirelessly, but fundamental physical laws mean that your quality of service will drop with each hop, which is why locality is important. Eventually, I would not be surprised if free public links were established between major cities, or if existing service providers adopted a “you carry our local traffic, we’ll carry your distal traffic” model, exchanging their resources for ours in the same way that each wireless user will give up some of his resources for cooperation with other wireless users..

The packet encryption methods that I expect to be standard with the universal comm service will likely find support and adoption across the Internet as a whole, not only for protection of private data, but also to enforce Network Neutrality by depriving the long-haul networks of their ability to snoop into what they are carrying. I would also not be surprised to see an adoption of the decentralized registration and domain name services that will be required for the universal wireless system on the larger Internet as a whole because of the increase in network robustness they would provide.

In the end, though, for all the bounties and opportunity this new system will make possible, it won’t negate the fact that some services will remain paid, albeit at much more competitive levels. There will still be data service providers for long-distance (say, greater than 100 miles) transfers, there will still be hosting services for those who don’t want to maintain their own sites locally, and there will still be pay-per-view television stations available – but instead of taking whatever they offer you, you will have choice. Instead of owning the market and locking it down, the data service providers of today will be forced to participate in a meritocratic market that they cannot buy out, and cannot control.