40 | New Scientist | 26 October 2019
Federal Communications Commission to
ensure net neutrality were repealed again in
2018, allowing telecoms firms to offer faster,
higher-bandwidth connections to customers
who pay for them. That is a potential win for big
companies such as Facebook and Netflix, but
bad news for small businesses and local news
sites. Twenty states are challenging the repeal
in the courts, and California has passed its own
net neutrality laws, effectively asking internet
traffic to obey different rules when it enters
the state. Other states look likely to follow.
In a way, all these developments are
symptoms of a technology that has outgrown
itself. “The internet was not meant to be used
in the ways we are using it today,” says
computer scientist Konstantinos Gkoutzis
at Imperial College London. One person’s
openness is another’s borderline anarchy,
after all. Whether through concern for national
security or user privacy, a desire for control
or to protect commercial interests, there are
many reasons why countries might want to
regulate internet traffic.
In some cases that might be good, says
Gkoutzis. The power of big tech firms and
telecoms companies has made the future of
the internet precarious. “If nothing changes,
it could soon become borderline unusable,
where companies the size of small countries
control what you see,” he says. Regulations
such as the GDPR aim to counter that power.
These problems, and questions of how
to regulate them, are only set to become
more pressing as the internet continues to
evolve. New infrastructures to carry internet
traffic are accelerating the rate at which the
unconnected half of the world’s populationcan join up (see “Sky net”, left). A truly global
internet will undoubtedly bring huge social
benefits. In other respects – not least
economically – the case is less clear-cut.
As internet connections improve, remote
working and virtual commuting are set to
become more common. Companies could
employ people anywhere in the world, with
machines in US factories, for example,
operated by workers in Bangladesh or
Botswana. With a positive spin, the gig
economy, based on internet apps such as
Uber that connect those wanting to buy goods
or services more efficiently with those willing
to supply them, could increase employment,
economic output and prosperity.
That’s certainly the view of many in places
like South Africa, where unemployment is
high, says Anri van der Spuy at Research ICT
Africa, a think tank in Cape Town. The reality
could be more nuanced: the global digital
economy often works to drive down worker
protections and pay in favour of big business,
says van der Spuy. “We tend to neglect the
fact that internet access could exacerbate
inequalities rather than alleviate them.”Even as the internet threatens
to break apart (see main story),
people continue to sign up
apace, with a few hundred
million new users joining every
year. Many are in developing
nations such as India and those
in Africa, and most do so via
smartphones connecting to
cell towers or by visiting
internet cafes. Coverage in
remote areas far from the
internet’s modern fibre-optic
backbone remains patchy
though, mainly supplied by
a network of a few dozen
satellites operated by
companies such as
O3b Networks and Iridium.
A handful of more pie-in-the-
sky schemes have aimed to
accelerate uptake. Loon, owned
by Google’s parent company
Alphabet, is developing a
network of high-altitude
balloons to beam the internet
down to the ground. It recently
started working with telecoms
companies in Kenya to test the
technology. In 2018, Facebook
cancelled a similar project
involving a fleet of large,
solar-powered drones that
could shoot the internet down
from the sky with lasers.
The ambition of both these
initiatives could be dwarfed by
plans for a space-based internet
such as billionaire Elon Musk’s
Starlink. This network of
thousands of satellites would
provide an alternative space-
based route for high-speed
internet traffic and offer
coverage to every part of Earth’s
surface. The first few test
satellites have already been
launched. Douglas HeavenSKY NET
devices are expected to
be online by 2022, more
than three for every person
on the planetThe internet
is becoming
ubiquitous,
but what does
that mean for
privacy?SOURCE: CISCO28.5billion
BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES