March 2010

[Commentary] In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, big telecommunications carriers write "[J]ust when regulatory certainty is most needed to keep the private-enterprise engine running in high gear, some parties advocate abandoning the current Title I model in favor of public-utility-type regulation under Title II. Robert McChesney, the co-founder of Free Press and a current member of its Board, articulated that group's radical agenda in an interview with the Socialist Project."

The companies throwing out some quasi-patriotic red meat. They pair up "regulatory certainty" and "private-enterprise engine" with "public-utility-type regulation" and, horrors, the "radical agenda" as expressed in an interview with a Web site that includes the word, "Socialist" in its title.

Another way of looking at this appalling parallel construction is to ask some questions. How can there be "regulatory certainty" when the biggest Internet Service Provider in the country (Comcast) has taken these very FCC principles to court, and may yet win? Answer: There isn't. And you can bet that any time the FCC in the future wants to use its vague regulatory principles to regulate, one or another of the Big Telecom Ecosphere will rush its lawyers off to the courthouse to challenge it.

And the high gear in which the "private enterprise engine" is supposedly running? Free Press has done some impressive economic work tracking telephone company spending on its network. Guess what? It goes up and it goes down, depending on company policy, not on regulatory policy. And spending on the network has gone down. Must have slipped a gear there.

As for "public-utility" regulation? They make that sound like a bad thing, when it doesn't have to be that bad. Of course, for the big telephone and cable companies, any regulation is bad, which is why they are playing that little shell game at the FCC ­ saying don't do that "public utility regulation" and challenging whether other regulation will apply. The companies know better. They know that the FCC has a lot of discretion of what to regulate and how to regulate it. They know this because they gamed the system to take advantage of the laxity. You can't avoid that entirely. But what you can avoid is a situation in which the FCC has no authority at all ­ the ultimate goal of Big Telecom.

And the "radical agenda"? Fact is, that until 2005, Internet access services were regulated the way they should have been, the way most telecom services had been for years. The "radical agenda" was the little switcheroo the FCC played, taking Internet access out of the direct authority of the Commission. Some of us want to return things to the way they were, and for that we're labeled radical. War Is Peace, you know?

Purple Communications, a provider of telecommunications relay services, has signed an agreement with the FCC that puts in place the framework for repayment of funds that were inappropriately paid to the company.

Under this agreement, Purple "acknowledges that the FCC [has stated that Purple has] a debt amounting to $18,459,064, and has determined not to challenge the FCC's position." Under the agreement, the funds will be repaid to the National Exchange Carriers Association (NECA), which administers the government fund that pays for relay services for deaf and hard-of-hearing consumers. In return for this commitment, the FCC will instruct NECA to release payment to Purple for relay services provided in the month of December 2009, and will continue to reimburse for legitimate relay services provided by Purple month by month. This action follows a Declaratory Ruling, issued by the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau of the FCC on February 25, that reaffirms the FCC's rules regarding which calls can be compensated from the government relay fund. Relay services allow people with hearing disabilities to communicate with hearing people. In video relay service (VRS), this is done through an interpreter who can translate speech into American Sign Language and vice versa.

The retransmission war is heating up in Washington. A group of major cable operators, satellite TV providers DirecTV and Dish Network, and Verizon filed a petition Tuesday with the Federal Communications Commission urging a review and changes to the law that governs negotiations between broadcast TV station owners and cable, satellite and telco operators for carriage of local stations.

The move comes in the wake of the showdown on Sunday between Disney and Cablevision over the retrans deal for WABC-TV New York, which came to a head on the night of ABC's live telecast of the Oscars. The cable operators are expected to ask the FCC to mandate that broadcasters cannot yank their signals in the midst of fee negotiations but rather submit to some form of arbitration if the sides can't reach a deal. An FCC spokeswoman declined comment on the issue. Broadcasters are sure to fight hard against the push for a retrans revamp. Local stations are increasingly counting on fees from subscription TV services to help offset declining local advertising revenue.

BT is calling for Virgin Media to open up its fiber network and allow other ISPs to access the infrastructure.

"It is remarkable that those calling for open access from BT are not willing to provide it themselves. We call on others to follow BT's lead in offering to open its infrastructure and content to all on a fair basis," BT said. BT was referring to recent proposals from the Conservative Party that slammed a suggested 'broadband tax', under which Brits with a telephone line would fork out £6 per year to pay for the roll-out of 100Mbit/s broadband. Instead, the party suggested the best way to fund the roll out is to use some of the BBC's Licence fund, coupled with the opening-up of the next-generation fibre network being implemented by BT. BT said it hopes to offer superfast broadband to five million Brits by spring 2011.