Video transcript · 4 min · 573 words

Michael Kende interview on Internet evolution and interconnection: transcript

Michael Kende, chief economist of the Internet Society and a former FCC economist, describes how his work on 1990s backbone mergers led to his focus on internet interconnection without regulation. He gives an optimistic view of the Internet's future, with growing user numbers, and says privacy and security must be addressed.

Key points

In the late 1990s Kende worked at the FCC on antitrust questions around mergers of major internet backbones such as MCI, WorldCom, UUNet and Sprint.
The same wires were regulated when carrying telephone calls but not when carrying internet traffic, which led him to study interconnection.
He wrote a paper called the Digital Handshake, arguing interconnection could self-regulate without regulation, and he says this has held true for over a decade.
He describes the Internet's outlook as mostly sunny, with more hopes than concerns.
The Internet was about to reach 3 billion users, about 40% of the world, and mobile could bring it to 4 or 5 billion.
He says privacy and security must be addressed, with simple ways to keep private information private and anonymity intact.

Chapters

0:00From FCC mergers to internet interconnection
0:47The Digital Handshake paper and unregulated interconnection
1:47Outlook for the Internet and the next billion users
3:05Privacy and security challenges ahead

Full transcript

0:00Well, I'm an economist, and in the late 90s I was working for the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission in the United States, and there was a series of mergers that took place between the big internet backbones of the time. Now, a lot of them don't exist or they were bought up, but MCI, WorldCom, UUNet, Sprint. And so I got involved in looking at the antitrust implications of those mergers, But that really led me into the whole area of internet interconnection because what was interesting at the time and is still true today is that these companies operated in fiber optics and wires across the country and when they sent telephone calls over them they were regulated and when they sent internet traffic over them they weren't.

0:47and we wanted to make sure it stayed that way throughout the mergers and so I really got interested in how these guys could interconnect without regulation on the mergers and I really, that's one of the topics I've stuck to. Then I went into consulting, did a number of interesting projects for the Internet Society and then I joined last August as the chief economist. That's it. Well I think that really it's again this interconnection issue that when I was at the FCC I wrote this paper called the Digital Handshake that really talked about how this interconnection could work and self-regulate on the internet using the same wires as they were regulated on as I said but really just it was one of the first papers that really documented why the FCC and why one shouldn't regulate this and I've really been building on

1:47that and even as the system has evolved over the last 12-13 years, it's really stayed the same and so I'm quite proud of that one because it really showed how the Internet could work without regulation and I think it's remained true today. Amen. Well, I think it's overall sunny but some snowed in clouds I guess. Clearly there's some issues, but I think there's general optimism that things are looking good and there's bright sunny days ahead.

2:35I think it's more hopes than concerns. I think that the really exciting thing, we're about to hit 3 billion users by one count. It should happen in June. So that's an amazing number, but that's still about 40% of the world. So I think that one of the things the Internet Society stands for is the Internet is for everyone. And I think that with the mobile technology, we're really going to hit 4 or 5 billion soon. And I think that's the really exciting thing.

3:05prospect that keeps me going. Well, I think we have to address the privacy and security issues that have come up. I think that so much of what we're doing in our lives we're putting on the internet and we have to be sure that the things that we want to remain private remain private. When we want to be anonymous it remains anonymous. So I think that we need a simple and easy way to protect our information and make sure it stays safe as we increasingly put our lives online, as we increasingly interact with our banks, with our government, with everything online.

3:47So I think that that's going to have to be addressed and I'm sure it will be and the Internet Society will play its part.

Source and licence

Recording: File:Internet Hall of Fame 2014 Michael Kende interview.webm by ImaginingtheInternet (2014-04-15), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY 3.0.

The transcript is machine speech-to-text by the TidyTools Audio & video transcriber; the summary, key points and chapters were written by Claude from that transcript. Both may contain errors: check the recording before quoting it.