October 2012

Lawmakers and the tech sector are pushing U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk to back their campaign against an Indian government procurement policy known as “buy India.” Despite previous U.S. pushback, India recently took another step to implement the new policy requiring a certain amount of domestic content in electronic goods procured by its government — and possibly all Indian companies as well. That’s alarmed tech companies and their Capitol Hill allies.

[Commentary] Even though America is in a “global bandwidth race” and our “nation’s future economic security is tied to frictionless and speedy access to information,” according to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski’s latest speech – we don’t have a plan for winning that race. And our current incumbent providers are not going to help.

They’re not going to be the ones rolling out the fiber-to-the-home networks that could provide this speedy access to information. Why? They have no incentive to do so. Because they never enter one another’s territories, they don’t face the competition that might spur such expansion. Instead, incumbent internet access providers such as Comcast and Time Warner (for wired access) and AT&T and Verizon (for complementary wireless access) are in “harvesting” mode. They’re raising average revenue per user through special pricing for planned “specialized services” and usage-based billing, which allows the incumbents to constrain demand. The ecosystem these companies have built is never under stress, because consumers do their best to avoid heavy charges for using more data than they’re supposed to. Where users have no expectation of abundance, there’s no need to build fiber on the wired side of the business or build small cells fed by fiber on the wireless side.

If we wanted ultra-high-speed connectivity in the U.S., we could:

• Provide loan guarantees for building basic competitive fiber infrastructure;
• Preempt state laws that make it difficult (or impossible) for municipalities to commission their own fiber networks;
• Require wholesale providers to build open, non-discriminatory networks as a condition of getting access to rights-of-way; and
• Require separation between content and transport providers to avoid the risk of harvesting.

Rural carriers that have been complaining about calls not being completed to their customers gained support from the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners last week when NARUC – an association of state regulators — sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission asking the commission to do more to prevent such problems.

“The FCC needs to expeditiously identify a provider or providers that have not resolved practices that result in call termination issues . . . and take appropriate and swift action,” NARUC Committee on Communications Chair John Burke wrote. Burke noted that some originating carriers still are not completing calls to certain rural areas, despite the FCC’s Feb. 2012 declaratory ruling on call termination, which gives the FCC the power to impose monetary penalties on carriers that fail to terminate their customers’ calls to rural phone lines. The letter builds upon a resolution passed by NARUC members in July which stated that “upon identifying providers that are not in compliance with the . . . declaratory ruling, the FCC should take appropriate and swift action consistent with the penalties set forth in the . . . declaratory ruling in order to restore public safety, homeland security and consumer welfare in America.”

A group of Senate Republicans urged President Barack Obama not to issue an executive order on cybersecurity, arguing that only congressional action can adequately protect the nation's computer systems.

Administration officials have said they began drafting an executive order after Senate Republicans blocked cybersecurity legislation in August. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a recent congressional hearing that the order is "close to completion." In the letter, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Dan Coats (R-IN), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Roy Blunt (R-MO) said an executive order would fail to address the nation's cyber vulnerabilities. Many of the Republicans who signed the letter had pushed for their own cybersecurity bill, the Secure IT Act, which would have focused only on information-sharing.