In this round of anti-monopoly wave, the interconnection special action initiated by the relevant state regulators is an "optional action" that exceeds the original expectation, and belongs to the extraordinary performance.

Therefore, to understand and see through this action and its possible impact, we still need to analyze and judge from its essence, from the whole historical process, and the internal logic.

Even on a global scale, this action is ahead of the curve. Although China's anti-monopoly process is lagging behind that of Europe and the US, I personally feel that this initiative of interconnectivity has a leading role to play in addressing the deeper issues of network governance.

In the past few months, our team has been working on this issue, and we have published two academic papers, one on the analysis and governance of "connectivity", which discusses the deep-rooted issues of Internet governance in China from a historical perspective and a global view. The other one is about the breaking down of the "walled garden", looking for countermeasures and suggestions to break down the "walled garden" by recognizing the nature of the "walled garden", its operation mechanism, and its influence and harm.

Why is the issue of interconnection between Internet platforms special? This is due to the complexity of the platform itself. From a research perspective, we propose the triple attributes of technical, economic, and social (TES) of large-scale Internet platforms to construct a systematic TES theory. For each of these attributes, the existing legal system is gradually improving, and there is a series of legal support from the security, competition, and data perspectives.

The interconnection between platforms is related to these three attributes, but it is not clear enough. Interconnection between Internet platforms, and interconnection between telecom networks, also have different connotations, and belong to the "unregulated" area, and is not limited to China, but also faces the same situation in the world.

In the world of the Internet, interconnection is the default rule, which is why the Internet is able to connect 5 billion people around the world, unlike the telegraph and telephone networks. The power supply network was already globalized as early as the 1960s, when the telegraph and telephone networks were also already global networks. Physically, the Internet is not fundamentally different from the telegraph and telephone networks.

But connecting 5 billion people together, the Internet is not the same as the telegraph or telephone network. While there is an inherent inevitability here, there is also a lot of historical serendipity. Winton Joseph, the father of the Internet, argued that universal free connectivity, from a technical point of view, is the default premise of the Internet, and that people don't need to discuss it or talk about the rules more than they have to, it's the default premise.

Milton Muller, one of the most renowned experts in global network governance, believes that seamless connectivity, borderlessness, and transparency are the faith-based laws of the entire Internet, and that in our genes, this openness is a physical theorem, the essence of the Internet as described by the International Association of Interconnection Networks (IANN), and the constant quantity of the Internet.

Another Internet researcher believes that this openness is a meta-level architecture of the Internet, which we all see with great admiration, including the recent hot "meta-universe". Openness is also a meta-architecture of the Internet.

My personal feeling is that whoever is able to break this meta-level architecture under this default principle, he must be an extraordinary person who needs super application of super power, which is also the problem of Internet connectivity.

Why is this "optional action", this "action" beyond our expectations, causing such a big reaction?

Let's go back to interconnection. Connectivity first appeared in the field of telegraphy, when people for different code rules, different laws, caused conflicts between countries, to break the deadlock in 1865, when the International Telegraph Union was established, equivalent to the Victorian Internet.

By today's Internet, the mission of the Telecommunications Union (ITU). Interconnection is an important issue for this union to address.

Interconnection is a basic rule in both the US Communications Act of 1934 and the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Including China's telecommunications regulations, there are basic requirements on interconnection. They are still mainly aimed at the interconnection of the underlying communications. The interoperability of Internet service information and services based on the underlying communication network is something that has happened only in the last decade or so. Interoperability can be understood as the interoperability between networks and networks, between networks and devices, and between devices and devices.

Placing this issue in the context of the entire historical process, it is not difficult to realize that China also had interconnections between telecom networks in the 1990s, but the real pure Internet interconnections took place in the 2010s. From the rise of social media giants with hundreds of millions of users to the emergence of "walled gardens" until the current enhanced version of "walled gardens", Internet connectivity has really become a "problem"!

We look at the interconnectivity between networks today, seemingly as a matter of course, but the real interconnectivity is not easy, but to lose the interconnectivity is effortless.

The Internet is organized in five layers of architecture, without having to consider the underlying interoperability, which is the basic default rule for the entire Internet. The problem of interoperability mainly appears in the fifth layer - a large number of interconnections at the application level. Although the underlying basic network has basically realized interoperability, but there are still many places that do not work.In 2016, the global network governance triumvirate jointly released a report - "Internet Fragmentation", they distinguish the problems affecting interoperability into 28 categories, from the technical level of fragmentation, to the government level, at the same time that in order to govern the Internet also brings some interoperability issues. There are also six categories at the business level.

So the actions at each level affect the interoperability of the Internet as a whole.

The big difference with the telegraph and telephone networks is that the telegraph and telephone networks were commercialized from the beginning, and we know that Edison and Bayer were businessmen who started their own companies, and the government felt that the telephone and the telegraph were issues of great public **** interest, and the government made a lot of rules. But the Internet is different.

In the first 25 years of the Internet's life, it was an experimental movement of scientists, not thinking about security, not thinking about commercial interests, so there was not much "control", just to ensure that it was as open as possible. So from the 60's packet switching technology, to the 70's TCP / IP protocol level of unity, to the 80's through the global universities to complete the globalization of the Internet, the formation of the domain name system, including today's domain name, a little more professionally known as the "unique identifier", without this system the Internet can not be interoperable.

By the 1990s, the Internet began to commercialize, and telecom defaults could not intervene in Internet interconnections, and this foundation is also very solid. In the 21st century, the rise of a large number of platforms, these platforms have a certain scale capacity, interconnection began to appear a problem.

Only then did countries begin to introduce various legal regimes to regulate these super platforms, treating them as "critical infrastructure".

So another big difference between the Internet and the telegraph and telephone networks - this is a major legacy of global network governance.

In the past, the U.S. government did not want governments to be involved in Internet governance, and today the Internet lacks a global governance mechanism and a very complete legal system, which is a historical legacy.

Moreover, the United States believes that the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) should not be in charge of Internet governance, because the ITU is too traditional and conservative, and does not conform to the Internet's so active and innovative ecology. But with the explosion of mobile Internet applications, the issue of interconnection and interoperability at the Internet level is more complex and comprehensive than in the telecommunications industry. So today our special action, just a beginning, just put a difficult problem in front of you.

Metcalfe's law proves that the value of a network is directly proportional to the number of nodes, or to the number of users, and the more users brush, the greater the value of the network, including the value of nodes. Anyone who connects to the Internet defaults to its rules, that is, accepts its rules. If you don't connect yourself, you're committing suicide.

What kind of companies don't want to be connected?

There are two prerequisites: first, their scale should be large enough to realize their own value even if they are not connected to the whole Internet, and second, the value of self-enclosure should be much larger than the value of openness, so they should close themselves up. Without these two conditions, there is no power and qualification for not being interconnected.

Therefore, this "walled garden" is essentially the "re-privatization" of the Internet, from a public **** things into a private garden.

The underlying logic of Internet development is the logic of science, not to follow the logic of business, not according to the logic of the government, because business and government need to have control, in order to make profits in order to realize the effective management of its security and other networks, as well as communication networks are not the same.

This time, the problem is equivalent to a "reboot" of the Internet in China. But a lot of technical standards, interoperability, how to define, how to implement, how to determine the rules, how to implement the technology, behind the need to do a lot of work.

Almost all of the Internet pioneers are worried about the gradual abandonment of openness in today's Internet. One of the fathers of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, both called for, and at the same time acted on, in a persistent effort to preserve the openness of the Internet. But in the face of commerce, their voices are getting weaker and less guided.

At this point, the power of government needs to return to re-harmonize the complex relationships of interest and power.

Internet connectivity is not planned, nor is it governed, but through the bottom-up, it slowly grows up, so it is the product of science, technology, the market, and government regulation over time. But the "walled garden" has begun to break the established logic of openness, the Internet to another direction.

The Internet's "walled garden" state, China is indeed particularly prosperous, but by no means only in China. In the global "walled garden", the most successful is Apple, which is a global problem, not just a Chinese problem.

In addition, some people say that if the "walled garden" is knocked down, there may be many security problems, there will be marginal tools, everyone is chaotic. I don't think this is something to worry about.

Because, from the beginning of the Internet, for example, when the most famous is the TCP / IP protocol and OSI protocol dispute. OSI protocol is an international organization led by large companies to participate in the recognition of governments, top-down specification of the very tight, but also take into account the security, but also take into account the commercial. But in the end, the two protocols to do PK, the final TCP/IP protocol won. And the main reason why people look down on TCP is that it is unreliable, the transmission is often packet loss, but also uncontrollable, can not collect money, in addition to insecurity. But why did such a "guerrilla" protocol succeed, because it conforms to the laws of the Internet, and the underlying logic of the Internet is how to build security for an open system.

So we can't go back to a closed system to seek security, we must seek security in an open state.

In terms of countermeasures, the Anti-Monopoly Law has no direct effect on the "walled garden".

I think the core countermeasures are two points, first, to recognize that the super-platform is a critical infrastructure, must take into account the interests of the public **** and social interests, must be open. And the real "walled garden" is a few big platforms, small businesses can not implement the "walled garden" strategy.

Secondly, I think there is a need for a "one-two punch" type of law. China has a lot of laws in place right now, but they're still a jigsaw puzzle, and in the face of this issue of connectivity, it's very fuzzy and very complicated. There must be a new law, it should not be like anti-monopoly regulation after the fact, it should be ex ante regulation.

The obligations of Europe's Digital Marketplace Act provide for seven items of active business, nine items of prohibited business, and two items of additional business, which are 18 obligations that basically take the interconnection of platforms out of the equation, and the antitrust issues are resolved, and the competition issues are resolved, and the data flow issues are resolved.

For China, the issue of interconnection, whether in academic research, or institutional research, there is great room to contribute to the world's Internet. Open interconnection between platforms without discrimination, discrimination, choice, or conditions should become the new normal for the entire Internet. (This article is based on Fang Xingdong's speech at the 223rd Digital Forum, who is the chief expert of the Institute of Social Governance at Zhejiang University)