Posted on 24th April 2024

Most roads are publicly owned and why more of the internet should be too

One of the often forgotten benefits of road use (in the UK at least) is that most roads are a network of public access, owned by the state and local authorities. Taxpayers fund this network, but it is essentially open to all to use subject to various laws and regulations. The state of the UK's roads can be a topic of national dismay, however we are pretty fortunate in that relatively few roads require toll charges to be paid in order to use them. And we wouldn't dream of charging certain road users for access such as pedestrians and cyclists.

Ah the open road...

Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta increasingly own all of our digital infrastructure. You would struggle to access information and interact online via websites and apps without using some of this infrastructure. From a user's perspective it can mistakenly be assumed that the majority of internet infrastructure is publicly accessible and free at the point of use. After all we can sign up for free email addresses, social media accounts and cloud storage.

But we do pay a significant tax to these companies through the cost of the devices and digital products that we use. Building and maintaining them costs a lot because of decisions made solely by those companies, and they also make the terms of use up themselves, which is part of the contract we must accept if we are to use them. This includes paying for access by selling our data.

The cost of digital products and services for small to medium sized businesses is rising rapidly. So while you might not consider the cost of your own devices and internet access to be excessive, literally every other product or service you pay for has this tax rolled into it - everything from your groceries to your clothing. The hardware and the software running the world is expensive and (for now at least) costs will continue to rise, and not fall, because of the increased use of AI.

Consider also that most of our government's digital infrastructure relies on these private companies too. Somewhat madly, the taxes we pay to the government are funding these tech giants, along with the invisible taxes we pay by buying goods and services that also have their costs rolled into their prices.

This also creates a lot of risk, which has to be managed carefully, and, you guessed it, this all costs money too. Clearly there is an economic case for reducing reliance on these technology companies, but also a strong case in terms of resilience and security.

Now if our digital infrastructure were all publicly owned and as 'potholed' as our roads, people would definitely notice a degradation in the quality of services received. And I'm not for a minute suggesting we don't use the services of private companies in building and maintaining some digital infrastructure, nor that they have don't have a place in our lives. But the question as to how we run and regulate a digital society and economy is a really big one that we're not talking about enough.

Take a particular slice of big tech's dominance in an area I currently work in: mobile apps. The cost to build and maintain apps is high and rising at a rapid rate. We are having to redevelop software regularly at great cost to keep apps going. Small software vendors are being pushed out of the market because of the way app stores are being run. On many devices you really only have the choice of one place to go to install software. The fact that vendors were charged a third of any potential money made from their apps until recently barely surfaced as a problem in the media. For over a decade now people haven't really cared much about the many problems of app stores and their market dominance.

Perhaps when people start having to pay more for the apps they use, they might then start to take notice. But again, much of the cost can be 'hidden' by app vendors, much like the tech giant's costs are rolled into most things we pay for. Companies can choose to harvest data or simply increase the cost of their main products and services to fund the apps they increasingly expect you to use to interact with them. That spiffy new app to manage your insurance policies is convenient, but also partly why the cost of your insurance is going up - with a good chunk of the money not even going to the company you buy the insurance from, but the tech giants who actually own their digital infrastructure.

Don't get me wrong - people should be compensated for building and maintaining apps and we have to pay for the infrastructure somehow too. But there are other ways to do this that don't essentially involve monopolies and all the problems that come with them.

I mention all this simply to stimulate the thinking and conversation needed about how we do all this stuff. It is a choice that governments have made to let this situation develop. There are also choices they can make to change the landscape of our digital infrastructure. But first people need to actually care about the current situation. If you've read this far all I ask is you consider this: if all our roads were owned by a handful of large private companies, each extracting disproportionate profits from the taxes they would make you pay (one way or another) for using them, what would our experience of using them be like? If your answer is 'not good', maybe you will also agree that more public ownership and regulation of digital infrastructure is not such a bad idea.