AT&T

NetCompetition

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                        

May 15, 2014

Contact:  Scott Cleland                                                  

703-217-2407

FCC Consideration of Title II Broadband Regulation is a Blueprint for Uncertainty

The Net Neutrality movement has lost its way. It’s now perversely focused on advancing Internet companies’ economic interests at the expense of Internet user interests.

The Net neutrality movement’s main priority used to be about ensuring that Internet users have the freedom to access the legal content of their choice.

Now they have become singularly-focused on securing permanent economic subsidies for edge companies by demanding the FCC set a zero-price for all downstream Internet traffic via reclassifying broadband as a Title II common carrier service.

Essentially, what their latest net neutrality scheme would mean is that Internet users would be forced to shoulder the entire cost burden of maintaining and upgrading America’s expensive Internet infrastructure without a fair-share contribution from the top Internet companies for the infrastructure costs they cause as a result of their dominant consumption of the nation’s daily downstream bandwidth.  

Simply, net neutrality has transmogrified from preserving users’ Internet freedoms to forcing all Internet users to fully subsidize all Internet companies’ bandwidth usage bill no matter if they use a particular edge companies’ services or not.

For those interested, please see a nine-minute highlight video of NetCompetition’s April 4^th expert panel on making consumers, not technology, the organizing principle of any update of the obsolescing Communications Act.

The experts, Gene Kimmelman of Public Knowledge, Jeff Eisenach, of the American Enterprise Institute, Mark Cooper of the Consumer Federation of America, and Hal Singer of the Progressive Policy Institute, all discussed the merits of making consumers, not technology, the starting point and organizing principle of any update of the Communications Act.

The FCC seems bent on overreaching their legal authority – yet again.

At the NCTA convention, Chairman Wheeler said: “I believe the FCC has the power – and I intend to exercise that power – to preempt state laws that ban competition from community broadband.” And in an FCC blog post, Chairman Wheeler also said this preemption of states on muni-broadband “is an issue that remains high on my agenda, and we will be announcing more on this topic shortly.”

FCC lawyers appear to think this is the time for more overreach of FCC authority because the legal outcome may be different than in the past.

The net neutrality movement is positioning to influence the FCC, Congress, and candidates in the mid-term election cycle, to support their version of net neutrality -- i.e. FCC reclassification of broadband Internet service as a telephone common carrier service.

It is instructive to look back at what happened in the last mid-term election cycle -- in both the 2010 election, and in 2009-2010 Congress -- when the net neutrality movement last tried this.

By way of background, this week the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) launchedNoSlowLane.com, a petition website to pressure the President and the FCC on their version of Net Neutrality.   

The 2010 Election:

The Internet has long had multiple speeds. And it constantly gets faster speeds via technological and commercial innovation, competition, and investment.

The Internet also has long met people’s diverse needs, wants and means for speed, with different technologies, pricing, and content delivery methods, and it will continue to do so.

Net neutrality activists’ latest rhetoric that opposes the FCC’s court-required update of its Open Internet rules, by implying that there haven’t been “slow and fast lanes” on the Internet before, is obviously factually wrong and misleading, both for consumers receiving content and for entities sending content.

Many in the media have fallen for this mass “fast lane” deception without thinking or questioning it.

First, isn’t it odd that those who routinely complain that the Internet is not fast enough oppose genuine FCC efforts to make the Internet faster?

Moreover, isn’t it ironic that the net neutrality activists -- who have long criticized the FCC for the U.S. falling behind in the world in broadband speeds, and long advocated for municipalities to create giga-bit fast lanes for some communities -- vehemently oppose FCC efforts to create “faster lane” Internet for those entities that need it and are willing to pay for it?

Please don’t miss my new Daily Caller op-ed: “The Least Efficient Part of Government.”

It’s Part 14 of my Spectrum Waste Fraud & Abuse Series. 

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Spectrum Waste Fraud & Abuse Series

Part 1: U.S. Government's Obsolete and Wasteful Spectrum Hoarding and Rationing [9-7-12]

Please don’t miss my new Daily Caller op-ed: “The FCC Disincentive Auction.”

• It exposes an auction at war with itself, with more economic disincentives than incentives to bid.
• It also spotlights the irony of FCC auction rules that approve a de facto Sprint and T-Mobile “wireless duopoly” of auction bidders.  

It’s Part 13 of my Spectrum Waste Fraud & Abuse Series. 

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Spectrum Waste Fraud & Abuse Series

It appears the FCC may be betting again that it is smarter than everyone else in the marketplace. Time will tell.

From the various reports of briefings about the FCC’s planned rules for the 600 MHz incentive auction, two things appear clear. First, the FCC doesn’t trust market forces. And second, the FCC doesn’t want the highest bidders to win the spectrum.

Apparently, the FCC is trying to produce something for everyone in this now circus-like auction process – a proverbial, dazzling three-ring-circus of political compromises that catch and keep different people’s attention.

At core, the FCC reportedly is adding a third ring to the already-complex, unprecedented, two-ring circus of the incentive auction. The first ring is the incentive reverse auction of broadcasters bidding for what they must earn in order to sell their spectrum, and the second ring is what wireless companies will then pay to own the broadcasters’ spectrum.

The FCC wants to add a third ring to this growing auction spectacle. Reportedly the FCC is going to effectively create yet a third auction process that would commence when certain, not-yet-known auction revenue targets are met in the auction. Below those FCC-determined-revenue-targets anyone can bid. Above those targets, the largest potential bidders’ opportunities to bid further would be dramatically restricted.