Some people regard the telephone network as a "commons,"
because the telephone companies have been regulated as "common carriers"
by the FCC. Today, the Commission simply defines
"common carrier" as "the term used to describe a telephone
company." But the underlying idea (which the FCC may have forgotten
in this deregulatory era) would apply just as well to railway lines or
postal services as to AT&T. A true common carrier agrees to move any
good, message, or person (depending on the medium) from anywhere in its
system to anywhere else for a price that depends only on factors that
affect its own costs, e.g., distance and weight or duration. A common
carrier may not discriminate on the basis of the content of the
message or the identity of the customer. For example, a telephone
company may not refuse to carry a phone call because of the speakers’
political views, nor may it charge different fees for different kinds
of speech. A common carrier railroad would have to carry any passenger
from any point A to any point B.
To preserve the common carrier ideal, regulations traditionally prevented
owners of communications systems from providing other services. This was
because firms that provided "content" as well as the "conduit"
would tend to discriminate in favor of their own services. For example,
if the telephone company provided 1-900 services, then it would be tempted
to give its own calls preferential treatment. For similar reasons, cable-TV
providers might give their own channels favored treatment, if they were
allowed to offer programming.
A common carrier telecommunications system is an important base for the
Internet, because it allows digital messages to be transmitted regardless
of their content, thus keeping the Internet uncensored and flexible. But
is a common carrier system a commons? We experience a classic commons
as collective property or as no one’s propertyas "free."
I do not think that we view telephone lines as common property. If they
resemble a commons, it is for a combination of three reasons: (1) the
common carrier rules; (2) the very low marginal cost of each minute of
use, at least for local calls; and (3) government programs that have brought
telephones into most homes, even in rural and poor urban neighborhoods.
If any of these three conditions were missing, then the telephone system
would not feel like a commons. This is a significant conclusion because
it suggests that three types of regulations are necessary preconditions
of the Internet as we know it.