Time Warner Cable

The old adage is true here; “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”

The Internet peering marketplace works exceptionally well and it has for its entire twenty year history. The unparalleled success, growth, and resiliency of the unregulated model for the Internet backbone peering marketplace has been nothing short of phenomenal in enabling and ensuring everyone reasonable access to the Internet.

Inter-networked computer networks are effectively the opposite of railroad, electricity, and telephone networks; trying to impose telephone interconnection rules on IP inter-networking is akin to forcing a square peg into a round hole. It predictably breaks both the peg and the hole.

Please see NetCompetition’s House CommActUpdate submission on interconnection -- here. (3 pages)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                           

July 11, 2014

Contact:  Scott Cleland 703-217-2407

Broadband Reclassification is a Problem Pretending to be a Solution; & Un-supported by the Facts, Unjustified on the Merits, & Unwise Given FCC’s Record of Title II Failures

Networks Aren’t Free; Businesses Pay for Electricity, Water, Gas, Transport & Delivery

Please see my latest Daily Caller op-ed: “Top 10 Failures of FCC Title II Utility Regulation.”

The FCC has had a failure-prone, seventy-year track record implementing Title II telephone regulation.

It is important to remember what the FCC did in the past with Title II authority, because those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.  

It is Part 56 of my FCC Open Internet Series.

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FCC Open Internet Order Series

Part 1: The Many Vulnerabilities of an Open Internet [9-24-09]

Some things are way too important to let slip by uncontested.

The FCC has asserted a foundational regulatory premise that warrants rebuttal and disproving, given that the FCC is considering if Internet access, and Internet backbone peering, should be regulated like a utility under Title II telephone common carrier regulation.

In an important speech on Internet interconnection last month to the Progressive Policy Institute, the very able and experienced Ruth Milkman, Chairman Tom Wheeler’s Chief of Staff, asserted that “communications networks are no different” than railroad and electricity networks when it comes to interconnection. “… At bottom… the fact is that a network without connections and interconnections is one that simply doesn’t work. Disconnected networks do not serve the public interest.”

NetCompetition submitted this proposed communications competition framework in response to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton’s and Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden’s call for input on defining competition and competition principles for a potential Communications Act Update next Congress.  

Modernizing the Communications Act – Modern is Consumer-Driven Competition

Obsolete presumption of telephone and cable monopolies: The core policy problem with monopoly-premised communications law is that it is hostile to the reality of a vibrantly competitive communications marketplace.

If Netflix’ position on net neutrality was justified on the merits, why does Netflix need to say so many deceptive things that are demonstrably untrue, in order to justify its case for its version of net neutrality?

Unregulated Google is increasingly pushing for maximal FCC net neutrality and price regulation of its direct broadband competitors, potentially via FCC reclassification of broadband as a Title II telephone utility service.

Please see my latest Daily Caller op-ed: “Top Ten Reasons to Oppose Broadband Utility Regulation.”

It provides a great overview of the best arguments why the FCC reclassifying broadband as a Title II monopoly telephone service, is a very bad idea. 

• It is Part 50 of my FCC Open Internet Series.

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FCC Open Internet Order Series

Part 1: The Many Vulnerabilities of an Open Internet [9-24-09]

Dear Executives of Internet Association Companies,

Have you thought through the global implications of your businesses’ public lobbying for regulating broadband like a public telephone utility? 

Possibly you are unaware that “The French government said it would push for a new European law later this year to classify Google and other Web giants like public utilities, forcing them to guarantee access to all services like phone operators. … We don’t want to become a digital colony of global Internet giants” said the French Economy Minister, per Wall Street Journal reporting.

As members of the global Internet giant association, and as global companies with large majorities of your current or future revenues coming from overseas, it could be beneficial to better think through the global implications of your high-profile policy support for new broadband utility regulation in the U.S.