THE CABLE LIFELINE

A week or so ago, 850,000 high-speed Internet AT&T Broadband customers woke up to discover their connections were gone — casualties of failed negotiations between AT&T and Excite@Home. Customers without dial-up backup were left in the dark, but for most users, service was restored in three days, and the transition process played out pretty much like AT&T said it would. For people who don't rely on their broadband connections for business, the outage was nothing more than a nuisance.

But consider the people who were profoundly affected by the outage: Online retailers that depend on their broadband connections to handle large volumes of orders. Stock brokers who rely on their connections for timely quotes. Game show phone-a-friends who need to know — in a hurry — whether the Sphinx has a nose.

The incident provides evidence that the cable industry needs to be regulated. Scott Cleland, president of Precursor Group, said last week that cable already is regulated — at least as far as rates and taxes are concerned. But the kind of regulation it requires is the kind that would allow a regulatory body to intervene, much as the FCC did when it forbade Rhythms NetConnections from pulling the plug on its network after filing for bankruptcy protection in September.

Cleland said Congress wouldn't regulate the Internet until it determines e-mail is a “national necessity,” and with only 50% of the country currently using e-mail, that day is well into the future. By Cleland's measure, only the postal service and the telephone network are considered an inviolable public trust. “It's not like you can't communicate without e-mail,” he said.

True enough. But if you extend that thought just a bit further, then there really was no need for Congress to draft the Communications Act of 1934, which gave birth to the notion of universal service. After all, who needs to talk on the phone when you can send a letter? According to the U. S. Telephone Association, AT&T had about 4 million subscribers in 1933, when the U.S. population was about 125 million.

The time has come for Congress to declare the Internet a public trust.

There are those free market advocates who will recoil in horror at the suggestion of more government involvement. Those naysayers should remember that it's difficult to conduct free market activity when you lose your broadband connection. Congress should make sure it never happens again, even for a day.