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Universities Metered Metering the educational use of the Internet is perhaps the worst metering of all. It is a short-sighted and mean-spirited idiocy that beggars belief. To target connectivity to other countries is worse still – utterly opposite to why the Internet has become so successful globally in the first place. Surely no educational organisation, even in the most cash-strapped third world country, would dare to introduce such a measure. Unfortunately, UKERNA, which oversees the UK network infrastructure for Universities, JANET, has done just that. UKERNA now charges universities for every megabyte transferred on overseas bandwidth. The given justification is cost cutting, and the tone of the Memo that introduces it is utterly antithetical to the usual ideals of education in a free society; the recommendations are proscriptive and judgmental. The Memo argues that this charge will force students to make proper rather than trivial use of the Internet. The presumptions are terribly flawed in logic, basis and practicality. Firstly, the need to cost-cut at all, let alone with such a draconian and internationally criticised scissors begs scrutiny. Let’s examine some points from the Joint Information Systems Committee Memo, in particular paragraph 5 and 6: 5. For the past several years, traffic on JANET has been increasing at between 200% and 300% annually, with the strongest growth being found on the transatlantic lines. Although the costs of procuring lines have been falling, this dominant growth pattern has meant strongly increasing costs. In 1987-8, the cost of JANET was £2.56m. For 1998-9, it is £19.7m. The funding bodies have allowed such growing expenditure so as to provide JANET free at the point of use, and to encourage the development and exploitation of networking technologies. 6. Institutions have now had the opportunities to explore the advantages of the global Internet, and they are in a position to make judgements about its value to them. The Funding Councils consider it no longer appropriate to provide central funds to provide 100% funding for what appears to be an unlimited demand for networking service, particularly when that service is provided free, with no incentive to the end users to apply economies in its use.” The implication is that the figure of £20 million will grow exponentially, despite a grudging recognition that bandwidth costs are falling. It is assumed that with continued growth of Internet use in academic institutions, the costs would become astronomical. This presumption is perhaps the most simplistic of all. It is difficult to understand how a supposedly well-informed Committee could make such an error. Bandwidth has become a commodity. The international market is becoming ever-more competitive. Evolving compression and modulation techniques have allowed fibre-optic lines to transmit much more information than was previously achievable, and this without substantial infrastructure investment. Even so, such investment is going on as well: there is a large amount of new international cabling and other communication media being installed at the moment to complement the increasingly efficient techniques of transmission. Spot trading in bandwidth is leading to deals for intercontinental connectivity cheaper in real terms than was available several years ago – by an order of magnitude. What’s more, UKERNA runs one of the largest proxy-server caches in the United Kingdom, and continues to develop its abilities, which catches more and more of the traffic before it leaves the UK’s shores. According to the Memo, access to this will also be metered in the future. The assumptions in paragraph 5 are, therefore, flawed. It is clear that, while bandwidth costs may increase, the increase will not be logarithmic. Indeed, as bandwidth becomes ever more available, prices may actually begin to fall in real and perhaps even monetary terms. That UKERNA has decided to react in such an hysterical manner is further surprising by the scale of the figures: £20 million is what it costs to run JANET. One of the companies paid to maintain it is Cable and Wireless PLC. This company had a 1997/1998 turnover of over £8 billion. This company alone probably could fund comfortably the whole network from the interest on its current account! This illustrates an interesting point – through short-sightedness, cowardice or whatever one might term it, UKERNA has let the blow land on those it can hit hardest with impunity – students. It is they, primarily, who will suffer from these malign arrangements, as provision is withdrawn or costs are passed on. In the long term, we will all suffer from its effects. UKERNA could have petitioned for increased funding, with the understanding that a network-literate graduate population is vital for the UK’s economic future. Their case would have been bolstered by the facts, as outlined above, that year-on-year cost increases would not be as drastic as some myopic doom-sayers have concluded. The current political climate is pro-Internet, particularly with regard to education. With extra finance available from sources such as the Lottery and student charges, petitions for a properly funded network would have had a significant chance of success if skillfully and determinedly put. There is no evidence that such petitions were ever attempted with much conviction. Moreover, a universal levy on the highly profitable telecommunications companies, similar to the access funds that exist in other countries, would have been politically popular, economically sound and could have added significantly to the network’s funding with little cost to taxpayer or student. Again, such paths were barely considered, let alone trodden. Certainly, metering was seen when it was proposed as mildly regrettable, but it was viewed as a neat solution to UKERNA’s perceived problems. It is no such thing. Less harmful alternatives were never properly discussed, never mind implemented. Why? The reason why UKERNA adopted such a deplorable solution to the bandwidth non-problem might more adequately be realised in paragraph 6 of their Memo. This is little more than an invitation to proscription and prohibition, which may, conveniently, sate an appetite for regaining instructive control over the student population that an “anarchic” Internet might “distract”. This is not overstated – the patrician attitude identified behind the metered “solution” might be subconscious, but it manifests itself in the tone of and implications behind the Memo. University mandarins, who in virtually all cases barely understand the Internet, and certainly realise its potential far less acutely than their students, are now given the responsibility by UKERNA to make educative and even moral judgements concerning its use. These are decisions not simply about cash-flow, but about what constitutes “valuable” use of the Internet and what may be discarded or censored as inconsequential, irrelevant or disruptive. This is a dangerous precedent for educational freedom in the UK. Oftel and its ilk like to blather on about the United Kingdom’s “cultural differences” as an excuse for metering. This takes on more sinister connotations when you realise the proscriptive and patronising impetus behind UKERNA’s stance. The organisation’s advocacy of interdiction is seeped in “nanny-knows-best” puritanical ointment. This is at odds with the aspiration of a flexible and broad education - beyond the lecture theatre. It is also at odds with what is expected from the “University experience” as a whole. Student Unions subsidise beer and mini-buses without a murmur. Entertainments Officers have budgets without question. A campus newspaper is given cash to report on rock concerts. A student on one course can read the books and journals in the University library from another with little more justification than general interest. University lawns are kempt not simply because they might be useful learning-fodder for students of horticulture. But the moment you might admit to using the Internet for communicating or learning or experiencing that which is not directly associated with your Taught Course, you are automatically considered morally suspect and unforgivably profligate. UKERNA’s stance smacks of utilitarianism reductio-ad-absurdem. It is not simply the trawling for carefully selected “relevant” information that makes experience of the Internet at University valuable. Even in “playing around”, important lessons in interaction and discovery are learned: Virtutem et Musas. Simply by getting to grips with the technology, chatting, “surfing”, searching and selecting, a student becomes a deft hand at and is imbued with experience of the system upon which the business world will increasingly be mediated. In the United Kingdom, where metered telephony may well price the student out of using the Internet off campus, the deprivation is even more unforgivable. Gaining knowledge is much broader and wider than simply having a degree course shoved down your brainstem. You learn to collaborate, to discover, to be self-sufficient – to become an individual. The University’s responsibility is to provide as much “raw learning material” and intellectual stimulus as possible – not to purée and filter exquisitely-priced gobbets of information for future office-serfs. The UK has no written Constitution. The UK has no freedom of information legislation. And now, it seems our students must pay for the privilege of being treated like nursery charges. In summation, the iniquity and imbalance of the situation is easy to illustrate: imagine the following scenario: a student in America browses an online archive at a UK university. The UK university pays for the data transaction. Now imagine a British student browses an online archive at an American university. The UK university pays for the data transaction, again! Perhaps the JISC Memo has a future solution to this imbalance; in the spirit a horror film scenario that you do not believe could possibly get any gorier, let us end with another quote from UKERNA’s Memo: “We have decided to charge for traffic on the transatlantic link only. It is possible that this position may change in future years; as one example, large year-on-year increases in transatlantic bandwidth will eventually necessitate large increases in domestic bandwidth; and, depending on the state of the market, this may affect the way in which charges should be calculated in future.” CUT opposes this foolish, myopic and unforgivable imposition to the hilt. Text by Nick Mailer