Internet access

The dreamer in me feels a little trapped by the high-speed-internet status quo. I have two providers to choose from, and the competition isn't exactly driving prices down or increasing innovation. Truly high-speed internet, like the gigabit/second access Google's experimenting with, seems way too far off, and my bills aren't any getting smaller.

In fact, since AT&T is providing "high speed" access at about 6.0 mpbs, and Insight's at 20.0, there's not a lot of competition. Insight's pricing structure limits the competition by bundling phone, internet and cable for a cost that's much lower compared with the services individually. I suppose I should be happy about that, but if I want to reduce my costs by dropping cable or by using the Magic Jack for my home phone, I can't.

The internet, at its essence, is a bunch of people hooking their computers together in a network. No one owns it, and no one owns access to it, although companies like AT&T and Insight have developed infrastructure that allows people to have quicker and more reliable access that they can charge for. People sacrifice that all the time by logging on through a neighbor's wireless router. So long as their access doesn't use enough data to trigger the Internet Service Provider (ISP) to look into it, this is considered acceptable by everyone involved, including the ISP.

I wonder what it would take for people to take back control over their own internet access through an public, ad-hoc, peer-to-peer network. A neighborhood do-gooder could set up a wireless router in a high location, and anyone in range could access it. Then, someone at the edge of the radius could do the same, and so on. Eventually, this would create a chain of internet access that would snake through suburban areas. Ideally, if there were multiple paths to the information a user needed online, the routers could choose the path that was least burdened by traffic and low signals. As long as someone, somewhere along the chain had internet access, the public has it as well, along with a side of choice.

Clearly there are technical hurdles to something like this in our current IP based system. There are security concerns and even moral ones, since it would potentially deprive those who have invested in the current network of the benefits and profit of their investment. Still, imagine the benefits that could result in such a network. The public could benefit greatly and directly from each improvement and price competition either comes back into play or becomes moot because the access is free.

Ironically, I'd say that ISPs are actually pushing people towards this eventuality by their current pricing structure. Look at any other utility - If I wanted to avoid an electric bill, I could run an extension cable to another house. Naturally, that homeowner would object to this because he has to pay more to cover my access. Same with water, sewer, and natural gas, and that's why it doesn't happen. Not so with communications - one fee gives users access to an unlimited stream, facilitating exactly the kind of network that I've described. If cable and internet companies could build out a pricing structure based on the amount of data used by the end user, such an ad-hoc network would be nipped in the bud. Users would suddenly have an incentive to lock down their wireless security, and internet power users would pay a fairer share of the costs.

Thoughts?