The Threat to the Net.

• Author: AUFDERHEIDE, PAT

Who owns the Internet? If you think the answer is "nobody," you're right--for now. That's why it has been such an astonishing innovation that has flourished so vibrantly at the grassroots. But this pioneering era may end badly, with an all-too-familiar finish: Big business tames a giddy and experimental phenomenon and turns it into a nice, tidy, and ever-so-profitable money-maker. And why not? That's what happened with phones, with radio, with TV. The difference this time may be that too many people have sampled an open information environment to settle for less.

The thugs of the story, who want to fence in the Internet, are the cable companies, led by communications conglomerates like AT&T They now have something many of us want: broadband Internet service. But they plan to make us pay for it in more ways than one. And the stakes have risen dramatically since the largest of the Internet Service Providers, America Online (AOL), announced a merger with Time Warner in January.

The fight is about closed access versus open access to broadband.

"Broadband" just means faster transmission of more data. For web users, that's a lot. It's the Internet squared: no waiting, no loading. With broadband, web pages fly by like the flicked pages of a book, and web video looks just like TV. In fact, it may be TV, and your phone, and your spreadsheet program, and your fax, and anything else that can attach to the sophisticated transmission system. That's because broadband is not simply the future of the Internet. It's the future of our communications systems.

Anyone familiar with the World Wide Wait is itching for broadband service. And cable companies would love to get it to you. But they want control over how you use it, and who gets to you through it, and they want to charge you for the privilege. That could turn the Internet of today, the open-to-anyone-for-anything system, into cable on steroids.

Now, as cable companies are beginning to offer broadband, local governments are demanding open access: the ability to get on the broadband using any Internet Service Provider on the same terms as anyone else's. The cable companies are fighting for closed access: They want to force everyone who uses their broadband service to go through their preferred Internet Service Providers.

Until the announced merger, America Online had been one of the leaders in the battle for open access. But, with its merger pending, that could change. Time Warner, along with owning TV networks, movie studios, magazines, and music companies, is also the second largest cable operator. AOL executives proudly pledged their continued commitment to open access. But if the merger goes through, AOL Time Warner will have to decide whether it's still for open access or whether it will opt instead for closed access.

"AOL benefited from an open access business plan and still does," says Andrew Schwartzman, head of the the public interest law firm Media Access Project, based in Washington, D.C. "But there are always attractions to monopoly. We hope the open access model prevails."

What AT&T does may be very important in that story. It's now the largest cable provider in the country, as well as the largest long distance phone company in the world. Back when AT&T was Ma Bell, before 1982, the phone company was an easy target for resentment. It's an easier target now. It became the largest cable company in the world last year when it bought TCI, which has had its own image problems. Before the merger, TCI was the largest cable company in the United States and was looked upon with all the fondness people held for Darth Vader (Al Gore even referred to TCI's chairman by that epithet). Now, the two reviled giants are joined at the bottom line.

Almost two decades after government lawyers broke up the old phone monopoly and AT&T abandoned local service, the company owns a pathway to many of us again.

Cable wires reach out and touch three-quarters of U.S. homes. They also pass almost all of them, and digital cable wires could handle phone traffic. AT&T has gone on to buy other cable systems and awaits...