Universal Broadband

At core the FCC's contemplation of reclassifying, or effectively treating, unregulated broadband info services as regulated telecom services, would be tantamount to the FCC declaring "eminent domain" over private broadband providers, i.e. justifying a government takings of private property for public uses, but doing so "without just compensation" or any statutory authority. 

If Congress and the Administration truly are focused on lowering unemployment and creating jobs, one of the easiest things they can do is tell the FCC to not kill potentially tens of thousands of jobs by preemptively regulating broadband Internet access to address a non-existent problem.   

Kudos to the American Consumer Institute for an excellent study on the job-killing impact of a net neutrality industrial policy which would effectively chose competitive broadband companies as job losers and much smaller and less job-intensive netopolies as winners. (See summary of study here.)

It is amazing that with one hand, the FCC is working on a National Broadband Plan to allegedly help the nation advance economically, while its other hand is totally working at cross-purposes economically -- pushing proposed net neutrality regulations that would kill jobs.

It is irresponsible for the FCC to consider self-creating new legal authority to impose net neutrality on ISPs by re-classifying currently unregulated information services as regulated telecom services (in the event that the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rules that the FCC does not have the legal authority to regulate the Internet in the FCC-Comcast case). 

First, claims of justifying such a hyper-regulatory potential FCC reclassification based on "the pro-competitive 1996 Telecommunications Act" is upside-down logic, given that the well-known purpose of that act was "To reduce regulation and promote competition...".  [bold added]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:  Scott Cleland

January 12, 2010

703-217-2407

NetCompetition.org Submits Comments on FCC Open Internet NPRM

In a filing to the FCC on the National Broadband Plan, the DOJ Antitrust Division, the U.S Government's leading expert in assessing the state of competition in communications markets, implicitly rejected net neutrality proponents' core thesis of broadband market failure.

Kudos to Pat Brogan of US Telecom for his first-of-a-kind analysis/ranking of how much different countries actually use the Internet per capita.

Kudos to Bret Swanson for his outstanding debunking of the approach and conclusions of the FCC's Berkman study on broadband policy lessons in his Real Clear Markets piece, "Harvard's Berkman Study Bungles Broadband." 

• To the extent that the FCC wants its decisions to be fact-based, data-driven, and respected, the FCC's National Broadband Plan conclusions can not rely on this exceptionally flawed Berkman study.
• The old adage is true: "garbage in garbage out."  

Kudos to the NCTA for putting the universal broadband focus where it should be -- on broadband adoption, and especially adoption where it can have immediate and maximum impact, i.e.  helping "middle-school-aged children in low-income households that do not currently receive broadband service" have the "opportunity to become digital citizens of the 21st century."  

The NCTA's innovative Adoption Plus initiative is an excellent example of voluntary public-private partnerships that can rapidly and effectively meet real public needs and forward the important goal of universal broadband for all Americans.  

The most effective use of scarce resources is to focus on broadband adoption in the 90+% of America that already has broadband facilities available and on greenfield broadband deployment to the single digit percentage of American households that are currently unserved.

Such a common sense cooperative strategy can produce the most good for the most people fastest.   

Like the FCC’s National Broadband Plan task force identified seven critical gaps in the path to the future of universal broadband, the FCC should resolve six identified “critical gaps” in the FCC’s proposed Open Internet regulations before moving forward to regulate the Internet for the first time -- by dictating Internet access pricing, terms and conditions or dictating what services which businesses can and cannot offer on the Internet.

• Here are six critical gaps in the FCC's proposed open Internet regulations:

Credibility Gap: The FCC isn’t "preserving," but changing the Internet by regulating it for the first time.

I commend The American Consumer Institute for their excellent new book of scholar essays, “The Consequences of Net Neutrality Regulations on Broadband Investment and Consumer Welfare.”