TeleFrieden

Despite vowing to eschew involvement in the latest Network Neutrality drama, I cannot sit back and let stand the resumption of the distorted gospel preached by the anti-network neutrality crowd.  This group has legitimate criticisms, many of which I have tried, via hundreds of law review pages—to analyze, and even endorse, in specific instances. Network neutrality regulation will not create a suffocating Internet rate regulation regime. The Democratic majority has clearly exempted broadband internet access from Title II common rate regulation.

One small silver lining in the Covid-19 virulent cloud: an unsponsored and truly unbiased empirical test whether wireless broadband networks offer a direct competitive alternative to wired broadband.  The answer is clear: No.  Not even close. Despite all the happy talk and sponsored researcher advocacy, broadband consumers understand the financial incentive to use Wi-Fi access to wired broadband wherever available. When homebound consumers have access to wireless broadband access via their smartphones and wired broadband access via personal computers and Wi-Fi, they opt for the latte

Like their south side University of Chicago economists, the Editorial Board of the Tribune waxes poetic and snarky about the virtues of the marketplace and how it can solve any and all network neutrality ills. The Editorial Board dismisses a particularly egregious throttling episode as “humiliating customer service failure” for Verizon when the company’s software automatically slowed transmission speeds of California first responder handsets as they tackled life and property threatening fires.  Does deliberate slowing down of transmission speed and commensurate service degradation wa

[Commentary] Until recently, the Federal Communications Commission dutifully provided statistics, perhaps framed in ways to support a policy objective. But until now, not one statistical report included a partisan jab. Despite lots of blabber about empiricism and humility, someone thought it fair and balanced to couple regularly-reported statistics with an unsupported assertion that the 2015 Open Internet Order singularly caused a decline in the pace of increased subscribership and network performance during the last two bummer Obama years.  In a statistical report, mandated by law, the FCC

[Commentary] While couched in noble terms of promoting competition, innovation and freedom, the Federal Communications Commission soon will combine two initiatives that will enhance the likelihood that Sprint and T-Mobile will stop operating as separate companies within 18 months. In the same manner at the regulatory approval of airline mergers, the FCC will make all sorts of conclusions sorely lacking empirical evidence and common sense.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s game plan starts with a report to Congress that the wireless marketplace is robustly competitive. The Commission can then leverage its marketplace assessment to conclude that even a further concentration in an already massively concentrated industry will not matter. Virtually overnight, the remaining firms will have far less incentives to enhance the value proposition for subscribers as T-Mobile and Sprint have done much to the chagrin of their larger, innovation-free competitors AT&T and Verizon who control over 67% of the market and serve about 275 million of the nation’s 405 million subscribers.

[Rob Frieden serves as Pioneers Chair and Professor of Telecommunications and Law at Penn State University.]

[Commentary] Who made the following public statement: "What would be best for consumers? My view is pretty simple. Our goal should not be to unlock the box; it should be to eliminate the box. If you are a cable customer and you don’t want to have a set-top box, you shouldn’t be required to have one. This goal is technically feasible, and it reflects most consumers’ preferences—including my own."
A) President Donald Trump;
B) FCC Chairman Ajit Pai
C) Former FCC Chairman Thomas Wheeler
D) Harold Feld, Senior Vice President, Public Knowledge (an advocacy group)
The answer: B. Perhaps Chairman Pai will replace the prior set-top box proceeding with one more likely to achieve his stated objectives. Maybe not. Chairman Pai appears to send mixed messages.

[Commentary] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has opposed broadband consumer privacy protection safeguards largely based on a false dichotomy: that Internet content providers, like evil Google and Facebook could collect, process and exploit consumer usage data, while ISPs could not. This is a false dichotomy, because consumers willingly opt to barter their usage data in exchange for “free” advertiser supported content access, while broadband subscribers will have to allow such surveillance and sales of usage data as a hidden or obscure cost of service.

[Commentary] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Pai has launched a charm offensive showcasing his commitment to transparency and regulatory restraint. However, behind the scenes, he ignores due process, the rule of law, FCC tradition, bipartisanship and fair play to shut down previous FCC initiatives of which he disapproves.