Policy Wonkery

A new Internet power structure is being developed by some heavy hitters in the American telecom industry.  The creation of the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG or TAG) was announced today by Adjunct Professor Dale Hatfield (see picture) of the University of Colorado at Boulder.  Professor Hatfield has been called on to facilitate TAG, which he described as “a neutral, expert technical forum [to] promote a greater consensus around technical practices within the Internet community.” As the former Chief of the Office of Engineering and Technology and before that Chief Technologist at the Federal Communications Commission, Professor Hatfield is well respected in the field.

What does this new group mean for the tech sector?  Before it becomes active, it’s difficult to know definitively what TAG’s roll will be, however we can already answer some important questions:

1. What kind of policies does Dale Hatfield endorse?
2. Who are the initial sponsors of TAG?
3. Who outside of the committee is endorsing TAG?

The answers to questions one and three are for another blogpost. Dale Hatfield’s bio didn’t provide any immediate insights for me into his policy leanings.  While Leslie Daigle of the Internet Society is quoted in the PRwire endorsing TAG, we’ll probably have to wait on other endorsements in the months ahead for a real answer to question one. For now, let’s focus on the second question: Who are the initial sponsors of TAG?

I want to look at the founding members of TAG to try and pose a conjecture about what type of policies they might endorse. From this, we can also infer how powerful is their collective voice.  The list of founding members — 10 in all — is full of big names: AT&T, Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc., Comcast Corporation, DISH Network, L.L.C., EchoStar Corporation, Google, Inc., Intel Corporation, Level 3 Communications, LLC, Microsoft Corporation, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon.

My first observation is that this list of players is seriously tilted towards “the tubes“  and away from content — no surprise considering this is a broadband group.



I just hope that we can resolve Net-Neutrality before this group starts having a larger voice.  While the above graph might be able to bring these players into lockstep on Net-Neutrality (as each would benefit from charging content creators for access) the committee is otherwise surprisingly diverse.  I consider Verizon to be a half-cable and half-telephone company — see my excel file here.

Bringing together companies from telephone, cable, and satellite seems promising because it’s important that these traditional competitors can find common standards and consensus.  Thankfully, while currently occupied by major players, the committee is committed to “diverse membership” and experts from other companies, non-profit groups, academics, and the Internet community will be invited to participate.

If Leslie Daigle hadn’t endorsed Professor Hatfield and TAG, I might be more concerned. As it stands, the Internet Society (ISOC) provides an open and diverse forum for discussing these issues amongst experts — essentially, they’ve been doing what TAG proposes to do, only ISOC’s been in the game for 18 years. Hopefully these two forums will help focus the discussion around broadband and provide consensus based solutions, rather than proving themselves redundant.