and large service providers bolster each other's position.
Again, he points to UUNet, whose parent company, MCI WorldCom, did not respond to requests for executive interviews for this article. UUNet provides Internet backbone for America Online (dossier), the world's largest Internet service provider. Given AOL (dossier)'s millions of global Internet subscribers and its ever-growing presence, UUNet won't approach its deals with that company in the same way that it approaches agreements with smaller ISPs, or with the mom-and-pop ISPs that seem to be springing up on every corner.
Instead, UUNet offers AOL a much better deal on pricing because of the huge volume of traffic AOL brings to the UUNet backbone, DiBiase says - "a cost advantage that a smaller ISP doesn't get."
Examples of power-wielding by the Internet infrastructure heavyweights reflect the influence of the phone companies, who were quick to jump into the Internet infrastructure business. After all, the telephone infrastructure was already in place, with dialup being the first Internet access option. For some, the extension of phone company power into the Internet is a troublesome aspect of infrastructure ownership.
"You have the entire history of the big phone companies trying to avoid orders by regulatory commissions to open their networks to competition," says James Love, director of the Consumer Project on Technology, a Washington, D.C., organization started in 1995 by consumer advocate Ralph Nader. "You have the entire history of the efforts of AT&T to avoid court orders and FCC [Federal Communication Commission] orders. You have a whole historical thing with the telecommunications industry with exclusive dealing, anticompetitive dealing, anything they can dream up to screw their competitors."
The effect, in Love's view, is "less competition in the ISP market, high barriers to entry, more consolidations and mergers, and eventually much more monopolistic control over the Internet." In other words, less choice for consumers.
"There are clear dominant players in the Internet, and clear issues when one player comes to dominate too much," Zeribi says, mentioning UUNet. He adds, "if they raise their prices on peering, for example, that will have immediate and direct consequences on other companies."
There is disagreement about how far those consequences might extend. Analysts, industry observers and executives of companies that own Internet infrastructure contend that the market is so highly competitive as to be, in effect, self correcting. Were one company to become too strong and begin throwing around its weight to the detriment of others, market forces would take over.
The consequences of any power play to block competition would be short term, insists J.B. Haller, a VP at Current Analysis. "There are pricing elasticities in the market. ... They wouldn't do that anyway, it does not make market sense."
As might be expected, executives at the large companies that own Internet infrastructure adamantly agree. Whatever their particular biases, it is worth noting that they deal in the market daily. Their companies all have to work with each other because the Internet consists of far-flung computer networks joined by cables, fiber optics and satellites owned by disparate companies. When it comes to establishing Internet standards, each has a voice.
"There's a minor concern by a lot of people who don't understand the market power of the Internet, and that includes the U.S. Justice Department and the European Union," says David Kunkel, vice chairman and executive VP of PSINet in Herndon, Va., about the potential for a few companies to wield undue power and influence over the Net.
Leonard Kleinrock, whose academic papers played a central role in establishing data networking technology, puts it this way: "The network is so flexible, and it's such an open network in terms of competition and architecture that if anyone began to flex some power, someone else would step in to compete with them."
A professor of computer science at the University of California (dossier) at Los Angeles and the chairman and founder of Normadix, a network startup in
