October 2009

Internet leaders Support Network Neutrality

Twenty-four CEOs and Internet company founders wrote in a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski saying, "We believe a process that results in common sense baseline [Network Neutrality] rules is critical to ensuring that the Internet remains a key engine of economic growth, innovation and global competitiveness." The letter is signed by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter's Evan Williams, Digg founder Kevin Rose and a few CEOs who are veterans of the Net-Neutrality Wars: Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos, Google's Eric Schmidt and Genachowski's former boss, Barry Diller of IAC/InteractiveCorp. Notably, a few non-Internet companies also signed the letter, including Stan Glasgow, president of Sony Electronics, and Charlie Ergen of satellite-TV provider EchoStar. "An open Internet fuels a competitive and efficient marketplace, where consumers make the ultimate choices about which products succeed and which fail. This allows businesses of all sizes, from the smallest start-up to larger corporations, to compete, yielding maximum economic growth and opportunity," they wrote.

AT&T, carriers fund democratic reps against Network Neutrality

All but two of the 72 Democratic lawmakers who cautioned last Friday against open-Internet rules have received campaign donations this year from Internet service providers, the companies most likely to be impacted by new regulations. For their most recent election campaigns, the House members received a total of more than $405,000 from the nation's largest carriers, AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and the trade associations representing them, according to a Post analysis of data on Opensecrets. AT&T gave the most: about $180,000 to 52 of the 72 Democratic lawmakers. The company has historically been the biggest donor to Congressional campaigns of any company. Verizon and Comcast each made total donations of about $73,000 to various Representatives on the letter. What was curious about the 72 Democratic members who signed onto the letter last week is that several are freshmen members of the House of Representatives who have never previously weighed in on the issue, said Ben Scott, head of policy for public interest group Free Press. "This is a safe issue for them because they don't have to take a position on it for public record but can still get money for their campaigns by weighing in on it," Scott said. "They are all people who need to get reelected and where small amounts of money make a big difference."

Vint Cerf, early Web technologists show support for Network Neutrality

Vint Cerf, Stephen Crocker, David Reed, Lauren Weinstein and Daniel Lynch sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski to say that Network Neutrality rules are necessary to ensure the growth of technology on the Web. "We believe that the existing Internet access landscape in the U.S. provides inadequate choices to discipline the market through facilities-based competition alone," they wrote. They also slammed critics for mischaracterizing the effects of such rules on the Web. "One persistent myth is that 'network neutrality' somehow requires that all packets be treated identically, that no prioritization or quality of service is permitted under such a framework, and that network neutrality would forbid charging users higher fees for faster speed circuits," they wrote. "To the contrary, we believe such features are permitted within a 'network neutral' framework, so long they are not applied in an anti-competitive fashion." Cerf, who co-designed the communications protocols used for the Internet, wrote that a push for stronger Web access rules would create competition and ensure companies that produce applications for the Web aren't blocked by the network operators such as Comcast, Verizon and AT&T.

Wireless Offers Challenges and Opportunities for Broadband

Any attempts at regulating the Internet may turn back the good that the industry has enjoyed, and may slow down efforts at innovation, said panelists speaking at a Progress and Freedom Foundation event. Many on the panel touted wireless mobile Internet as the means to get efficient and competitive services to consumers, and they identified the wireless sector as a key component of increased broadband deployment and penetration.

Groups Say FCC Bloggers Exemption Is Discriminatory

A quartet of civil rights organizations has asked the Federal Communications Commission to "correct or amend" its decision to allow online commenters to the FCC's blog to weigh in on proposed open Internet rules during the seven-day period when sunshine rules prevent lobbying of commissioners on public meeting agenda items. The FCC last week waived its prohibition on outside (ex parte) contacts with the commissioners on the issue of network neutrality in the seven days before it is to take up that issue Oct. 22, so long as the contacts are via its new openinternet.gov blog. The reason, said the agency, was that those contacts "take place in a forum that is both instantaneously available to all interested parties and will not intrude on the commission's decision making." The Asian American Justice Center, League of United Latin American Citizens, National Urban League and One Economy Corporation, argued in an emergency motion Monday that the waiver is discriminatory. "While undoubtedly intended to facilitate public participation, the practical effect of this action is to bar public input by those who lack Internet access or rely on other means of communication while affording those with Internet access the last word," they said.

Net Neutrality: A Historical Timeline

On February 3, 2003, law professor Tim Wu presented a paper on "Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination," at the Silicon Flatirons conference in Boulder, Colo. Wu's paper is believed to be the first use of the term. This timeline follows along the net neutrality debate from the release of that paper through the Comcast appeal of a Federal Communications Commission decision that the cable company violated net neutrality principles.

NATOA stresses importance of local government "Middle Mile" networks in National Broadband Plan

Representatives of the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors met with Federal Communications Commission staff to discuss the importance of local government "Middle Mile" networks and the role they should be asked to play in the National Broadband Plan. The meeting reviewed a series of specific case studies of local government broadband "anchor institution" networks. The participants discussed the commonalities, requirements, and impediments to these networks as described on the enclosed materials. The participants also discussed the role these networks can and should play in bringing high capacity broadband at low cost to anchor institutions and the potential of these networks to provide "middle mile" transport for "last mile" broadband providers. Based on the lessons learned in these case studies, the participants discussed the action steps necessary to facilitate deployment of these networks in underserved communities across the country.

Low Country Broadband

On a rainy Monday night, in the rural town of Ravenel, SC (pop. 2,288) over 100 people came to the Community Hall for a Consumer Forum on Broadband. After brief remarks from a panel that included Commissioners Copps and Clyburn, the mayors of Ravenel, nearby Hollywood (pop 4,398) and Meggett (pop 1,363), local pastors and community leaders, the floor was open to the public. In an area with more than 18% of the population living below the poverty line (vs. 12.6% nationwide) the issue of what 'affordable service' meant while residents were 'struggling to put food on the table' was a recurring theme. Herman Allen, a local parade float maker, came to the mic to explain that he has been losing business because of the intermittent quality of his Internet service which prevented him from promptly responding to email requests from customers. He then took a moment to apologize to some folks in the crowd and mayors on the dais for e-mails about pending floats that had yet to be responded to.

Congressional Staffers Need To Understand The Basics Of Broadband

[Commentary] Sure, it's easy to say, "Internet for all!" and "The Internet should be open!" But where the rubber of good intentions meets the road of making policy, we can't afford to have policymakers that don't know where they're supposed to be going or how they're supposed to get there. And perhaps even worse: we can't afford to scale back the policies our country needs to move forward because of an assumption that Congress can't or won't understand the issues at stake. I think Congress is ready to listen. But the onus is on us to reach out to them and figure out how to talk about these complex issues in terms that they and the public at large can understand. Because I fear that without an understanding of the basics of broadband, that Congress will never be able to create the kinds of forward-thinking broadband policies that our country needs to make the rapid forward progress required to remain a leader in the global digital economy.

Mobile Marvels

The reason why mobile phones are so valuable to people in the poor world is that they are providing access to telecommunications for the very first time, rather than just being portable adjuncts to existing fixed-line phones, as in the rich world. "For you it was incremental—here it's revolutionary," says Isaac Nsereko of MTN, Africa's biggest operator. According to a recent study, adding an extra ten mobile phones per 100 people in a typical developing country boosts growth in GDP per person by 0.8 percentage points. In places with bad roads, unreliable postal services, few trains and parlous landlines, mobile phones can substitute for travel, allow quicker and easier access to information on prices, enable traders to reach wider markets, boost entrepreneurship and generally make it easier to do business. A study by the World Resources Institute found that as developing-world incomes rise, household spending on mobile phones grows faster than spending on energy, water or indeed anything else. All this is transforming the telecoms industry. Within just a few years its center of gravity has shifted from the developed to the developing countries. The biggest changes are taking place in the poorest parts of the world, such as rural Uganda