Want to see broadband’s future? Check out the airline industry
*Stacey Higginbotham **
**GigaOm.com**
**
**Dec. 29, 2014 - 10:55 AM PST*
https://gigaom.com/2014/12/29/want-to-see-broadbands-future-check-out-the-airline-industry/
A /New Yorker/ explainer on why the airlines want to make you suffer
<http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/airlines-want-you-to-suffer>
has been making the social media rounds. It’s an excellent case study in
how the airlines have created a miserable experience for passengers so
they can build a profitable business based on charging fees for bags,
early boarding and better seats. It’s also just like the playbook big
broadband companies are using as they make efforts to charge both
consumers and the content companies for access to their pipes.
The parallels between the airlines and the goals and arguments of the
broadband industry are too similar. For example, from the /New Yorker/
piece we have this section
<http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/airlines-want-you-to-suffer>:
The airlines, and some economists, argue that the rise of the fee
model is good for travellers. You only pay for what you want, and
you can therefore save money if you, for instance, don’t mind
sitting in middle seats in the back, waiting in line to board, or
bringing your own food. That’s why American Airlines calls its fees
program “Your Choice” and suggests that it makes the “travel
experience even more convenient, cost-effective, flexible and
personalized.”
Meanwhile, if we go to the arguments made by AT&T back in 2011 when it
first capped its DSL broadband service at 150 GB per month, you’ll see a
similar argument of people paying for what they use in this article from
CNN
<http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/03/technology/att_broadband_caps/index.htm>:
“Our approach is based on customers’ feedback,” said Mark Siegel,
spokesman for AT&T. “They told us that the people who use the most
should pay more, and they also told us we should make it easy for
them to track their usage. We think our approach addresses these
concerns.”
But as we have argued fairly consistently
<https://gigaom.com/2008/06/04/why-tiered-broadband-is-the-enemy-of-innovation/>
the danger is that when you start creating these sorts of incentives you
also create a reason for the airline or the broadband provider to create
a crappy experience so people pay to avoid it. Which is what the /New
Yorker/ points out and argues has happened in the airline industry:
The necessity of degrading basic service provides a partial
explanation for the fact that, in the past decade, the major
airlines have done what they can to make flying basic economy,
particularly on longer flights, an intolerable experience. … Bill
McGee, a contributing editor to /Consumer Reports/ who worked in the
airline industry for many years, studied seat sizes and summarized
his findings this way: “The roomiest economy seats you can book on
the nation’s four largest airlines are narrower than the tightest
economy seats offered in the 1990s.”
The /New Yorker/ noted that this behavior on the part of the airlines
has led to a combined $31.5 billion in income from fees and ancillary
payments, which is the fastest-growing source of income for primary
airlines. A source of income that the article points out has grown by
1200 percent since 2007.
While the typical consumer might read this and experience rage, I read
this and experienced a moment of hope. This article is a gift to anyone
concerned about the potential merger between Comcast and Time Warner
Cable
<https://gigaom.com/2014/12/24/as-comcast-merger-enters-final-phase-deal-may-be-on-thin-ice/>
— a merger that would decrease broadband competition
<https://gigaom.com/2014/10/21/antitrust-experts-slam-comcast-merger-plan-warn-of-threats-to-netflix-and-amazon-prime/>
and also eliminate the last big broadband provider that hasn’t
implemented usage based broadband caps
<http://consumerist.com/2014/04/14/comcast-twc-merger-could-bring-broadband-data-caps-to-pretty-much-everyone/>
that essentially take us down the airline’s road of paying for a better
broadband experience.
It is a likewise a gift to people concerned about the Open Internet
rules that the Federal Communications Commission is considering
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/fcc-open-internet-rules-republicans-113774.html>
— the so-called network neutrality rules — that could lead to content
providers having to pay for faster access to the end consumer.
Under such deals, a concern is that sites that don’t pay get left behind
and are less able to compete against larger sites who can afford to pay
up for faster access, which is the equivalent of the poor traveler who
is stuck checking a bag at the gate while all the passengers who booked
economy plus seats board before her toting their luggage and take up the
overhead bins.
Don’t want to check that bag or sit squished in the middle with nary a
bag of peanuts on that four-hour flight? Pay up and just be grateful you
get anywhere at all. Don’t want to suffer through 150 GB data caps, pay
up for more and hope that whatever site you want to visit does the same
to make sure its bits reach you at a decent rate. And yeah, just be
grateful that you get to experience the convenience of streaming as
opposed to driving to the Blockbuster Video to rent a movie on disc.
So read that article
<http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/airlines-want-you-to-suffer>
and rage about the airlines, and then turn that rage into something
useful by using it to stop the same thing from happening to your
broadband internet. Tell your Congressman how
<http://www.contactingthecongress.org/> you feel about the Comcast and
TWC merger and network neutrality.
_______________________________________________
Medianews mailing list
[email protected]
http://etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews_etskywarn.net
