In the article “Easter Island’s End,” Jared Diamond described the steps that led to the deforestation of a subtropical, fertile paradise.
Over a few hundred years, inhabitants used the gigantic palm trees around them as rolling surfaces on which to haul stones; they then used more trees to lever the stones into place on platforms. Competing chieftains built larger statues on larger platforms. Eventually, the last tree was gone and the island was covered only in grasses and shrubs, leading to starvation and even cannibalism. Diamond explains that there was no signal crisis:
“Gradually trees became fewer, smaller, and less important. By the time the last fruit-bearing adult palm tree was cut, palms had long since ceased to be of economic significance. That left only smaller and smaller palm saplings to clear each year, along with other bushes and treelets. No one would have noticed the felling of the last small palm.”
The Easter Islanders’ incremental march toward disaster is an apt analogy for Apple’s decision to keep Google Maps off the newly released iPhone 5, the latest of a series of steps toward control by powerful actors over users’ online behavior. The question is whether the pattern is clear enough for regulatory authorities to take action.
Apple has a strong incentive to protect its platform. Google’s Android is far more popular in the United States than Apple’s system, but the iPhone is particularly appealing to younger Americans — two-thirds of whom already own a smartphone.
So iPhone users may be irritated by Apple’s removal of Google Maps — not least because Apple’s own mapping software is sometimes inaccurate and doesn’t include directions for public transit — but there is nothing they can do.
AT&T and Verizon Communications, meanwhile, have strong incentives to ensure that their subscribers remain loyal to their wireless services, and iPhone users may have lower churn rates. It’s a tradeoff, though, because the carriers are forced to heavily subsidize these new devices.
In return for subsidizing upgrades to the iPhone 5, the wireless giants hope to be able to reap higher revenue by shunting those users to their new shared data plans — particularly as users are forced to pay extra fees for using more data than their plans allow and for connecting additional devices.
The plans themselves are likely to give AT&T and Verizon a greater share of the wireless market, because families and businesses will push to concentrate all their devices into a shared plan. The rebellious family members or employees who subscribe to T-Mobile will be under significant pressure to switch.
Verizon’s chief financial officer, Fran Shammo, has already announced that unlimited data plans are “going by the wayside.” That’s no accident because new Verizon customers have no choice but to go the shared data plan route.
AT&T now blocks use of Apple’s videoconferencing application FaceTime over its cellular network by anyone who hasn’t bought a shared data plan. This means users will be subject to the carrier’s data caps and more likely to incur extra fees. Public-interest groups have criticized AT&T’s actions. The company is unmoved and has dismissed the complaints as “kneejerk reactions.”
These incremental gestures toward concentration become more meaningful when you include the wired marketplace, where Comcast and other geographically clustered cable companies are dominant. In this area, data caps are also in place and companies have the ability to decide how to treat individual applications. There is little effective competition in the data market from the wireless carriers and little effective oversight. In fact, Verizon is already cooperating with Comcast.
Users of the iPhone whose maps application was swapped out when they upgraded to Apple’s iOS 6 platform have had a glimpse of what the carriers’ power could entail.
We should remember what happened to the people of Easter Island as they chopped down their forests, until it was too late and their civilization was destroyed.
