Consumers must retain their rights to utilize any legal applications, content, devices, and services of their choosing on the broadband networks they use. In December 2013, the Benton Foundation published The New Network Compact: Making the IP Transition Work for Vulnerable Communities, written by Ted Gotsch.
One of the most common criticisms of the Communications Act is the so-called “siloed,” sector-based nature of the law and resulting regulation. The Communications Act consists of seven titles: general provisions, common carriers, provisions related to radio, procedural and administrative provisions, penal provisions and forfeitures, cable communications, and miscellaneous provisions. Each of the titles governs a specific sector of the communications economy with inconsistent approaches to definition and regulation.
By dividing the overall regulatory scheme into separate titles based on specific network technologies and services, the law does not contemplate the convergence of technologies in the modern digital era. While there were historic reasons for separating the Act into service-based titles, the Act and subsequent changes to it did not envision the intermodal competition that exists today. As a result, there are different regulatory obligations based on the mode of technology, even though many of the technologies are functionally equivalent either technologically or from the consumer perspective. Because the Federal Communications Commission is structured in much the same way as the Act, the assorted bureaus and divisions within the agency may duplicate certain functions and fail to cover other functions, resulting in a lack of clear regulatory authority.
These questions address thematic concepts for updating the Communications Act. In addition to these, the committee will accept comments on any aspect of updating communications law. Please respond by January 31, 2014 to CommActUpdate@mail.house.gov:
[Commentary] There's a clear case for having more wireless companies rather than fewer of them, and this week demonstrates why.
AT&T unveiled a new service plan called Sponsored Data, which allows companies to subsidize the data being used by smartphone subscribers. While the program means more data in your monthly allotment for you to use as you wish, critics say it creates an uneven playing field for content providers who may simply pass on the extra costs of sponsorship to you anyway. In a monopoly situation, this would be pretty bad; consumers wouldn't have anywhere else to go. It doesn't get much better in a hypothetical duopoly, either. Verizon, the nation's second-largest carrier, hasn't announced anything in response to Sponsored Data, and it's unclear how it would react if it and AT&T were the only two carriers in America. But barely a day after Sponsored Data was unveiled, Sprint has launched its own rate schedule meant to drive down costs for subscribers. And T-Mobile is expected to publicize a plan to start covering the early termination fees of new subscribers.
All of this could happen in a consolidated wireless industry. But it'd be a lot less likely. And as long as having four national carriers can produce these kinds of changes, regulators might want to think twice before smiling on any plan that reduces the field to three.
T-Mobile is indeed trying to lure subscribers away from other networks by offering to cover the early termination fees those customers would face by switching.
T-Mobile said it would pay up to $350 per line as part of its promotion, which also requires customers to trade in their old phone. But that trade-in will also come with an instant credit of up to $300, giving switchers a total potential credit of $650. Customers will then be allowed to pick any T-Mobile phone, including high-end smartphones, for $0 down. That's a crazy amount of money, particularly in light of AT&T's recent attempts to attract customers away from T-Mobile. When the smaller company's plans leaked last month, AT&T seized the opportunity to offer a $450 credit to people who switched to its network. That dollar figure bested what T-Mobile was reportedly planning to offer by $100. But now T-Mobile has countered that preemptive strike by raising its offer even higher. Crucially, the offer is also being extended to T-Mobile's existing customer base, executives said. That means that if you're already on contract with T-Mobile, you're eligible for the same credits and free phone.
At the Consumer Electronics Show, T-Mobile US CEO John Legere unleashed a stream of curses and insults at competitors AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint.
Family plans are "total horseshit… nothing more than a contract on super steroids with staggered dates -- a complete life sentence," Legere said. "Sprint is a pile of spectrum waiting to be turned into a capability. Right now, their network is completely horrible." AT&T, meanwhile, is a "total source of amusement for me," he said, blasting the company's plan to charge content providers for the right to bypass data caps that hinder customers instead of just offering unlimited data like T-Mobile does. Legere, wearing a T-Mobile T-shirt and holding a can of Red Bull, even said he plans to send a cease and desist letter to AT&T "to stop their advertising that say they're the fastest." Cellular companies often claim to be the fastest or biggest network -- naturally, T-Mobile today said the latest numbers show it's the fastest. "This industry blows. It's just broken. It needs change," Legere said.
Legere failed to deny that his company would be purchased by Sprint and corporate SoftBank this year, as has been recently rumored. In response to a question about the deal, Legere said, "I can tell you that the T-Mobile brand, attitude, and identity is here to stay."
[Commentary] AT&T’s Sponsored data scheme is actually just a win for AT&T. This plan is a tremendous loss for everyone else.
While people sometimes get lost in the details, at its core network neutrality is a pretty straightforward concept: it is the principle that the company that connects you to the Internet does not get to control what you do on the Internet. With its sponsored data scheme, AT&T is proposing to do just that. AT&T’s relationship with a website, app, or service will control the way that AT&T’s subscribers interact with the Internet. AT&T is imposing its own tax on anyone who wants to connect to its millions of subscribers. Of course, this tax is only attractive to content creators if AT&T’s normal service is too shabby to deliver their content without it. That gives AT&T a big incentive to keep data caps low and overage fees high. Who gets to innovate in a world where you need to pay AT&T to compete? The answer? Established services that can afford to pass the fee onto customers. That’s why net neutrality isn’t really about Netflix or Facebook. They may not like it, but when push comes to shove they will probably pay AT&T’s tax and pass it along to their customers. But the next Netflix or the next Facebook won’t be able to afford to do that at the start. Startups will abandon any potentially “data-intensive” innovation to big players -- a recipe for stagnation. As more established services move to AT&T’s special lane, caps covering everything else may go down bringing the definition of data-intensive down with it.
[Commentary] AT&T’s Sponsored data program is essentially exploiting a loophole in existing net neutrality policy that exempts wireless providers from the same regulations: AT&T’s Sponsored Data program would be illegal over wired connections. This gap in regulation is particularly frustrating as consumers moved to mobile devices in droves over the past year -- it’s where the data-using populace is going, and it’s ripe for exploitation. Furthermore, AT&T’s program wouldn’t exist without the institutionalization of data caps among ISPs. What was an inherently ridiculous instance of false scarcity is now the norm, and while connectivity options like Google Fiber demonstrate how much better our networks can be, there remains little incentive for ISPs to improve their infrastructure. It would be nice to think that this is all needless handwringing, but history doesn’t support that. We’re already paying money for data limits that don’t exist, and once one carrier finds success, the rest generally follow suit.
Under AT&T’s so-called sponsored data plans, companies that provide apps to their customers will pay for the bandwidth used to consume their apps on smartphones, rather than data consumers paying for the bandwidth themselves.
For willing companies, the arrangement is a way to win the loyalty of its customers away from competitors; when an AT&T customer uses these companies’ apps on a wireless network, it doesn’t eat into their data allowance. Sponsored data is a way for telecoms to tap into mobile advertising revenue streams indirectly. The question is whether it undermines network neutrality, the idea of the Internet remaining an open medium. The fear is that if sponsored data takes off, cash-rich social networks like Facebook could try to stifle emerging competitors such as Twitter or Snapchat by offering to pay for their customers’ usage. That could conceivably lead to an inferior Facebook experience (with a deluge of advertising to pay for it) and an inferior Internet, where emerging platforms find it difficult to compete. The Federal Communications Commission’s Open Internet rules don’t apply to wireless networks. Unless that changes, the company-paid Internet of the future could be a lot less friendly.
[Commentary] Rather than introducing a new way of charging for Internet access, what AT&T's Sponsored Data service is actually doing is creating a formal process for advertisers to make their offerings less expensive.
There's plenty to be concerned about in AT&T's Sponsored Data announcement. First, AT&T's prepaid customers cannot participate in the program. Perhaps more worrisome are AT&T's initial launch partners. None of these is a big player and none is the kind of marquee name that AT&T needs to draw attention to the program. However, AT&T said these examples were specifically selected to show the range of companies that could participate in Sponsored Data. I also think there are plenty of problems on the user interface side of things. The idea that AT&T will notify users of sponsored content via their phones' status bar is crafty, but it's an involved concept that might not be easily explained to the average user. Further, what if a subscriber moves from a Wi-Fi network to a cellular network while accessing sponsored data? What about femtocells? And are both HTML5 and native apps supported? What about videos accessed through HTML5? Will users unknowingly rack up unwanted data charges by surfing to other ads not covered by a sponsored advertiser? After all, smartphone status bars aren't always visible, particularly when viewing videos.
At its core, AT&T's Sponsored Data service represents a welcome innovation from a carrier that too often plays catch up to its rivals. T-Mobile first decoupled device subsidies from service plans, and Verizon Wireless first introduced shared data plans. Now AT&T has figured out a way to allow advertisers to pick up the cost of mobile data access. It's an innovation that may well fall flat--but it's an innovation nonetheless, and I'm interested to see how it will play out.
American tech companies whose customers and networks have been compromised by the National Security Agency's sweeping surveillance efforts may have a new sympathetic ear inside Washington: the Commerce Department.
"We've been talking to various constituencies within the business community, we understand their issues [with NSA spying]," said US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, speaking at CES 2014 in Las Vegas, the first Commerce Secretary to do an open Q&A at the gadget conference. Sec Pritzker also said that her division is "part of the conversation" going on now inside the White House about reviewing the NSA's surveillance powers. "We very much have a voice at the table," Sec Pritzker added, saying that President Obama "would make something public shortly." Sec Pritzker didn't elaborate on what specific reforms to NSA spying the president was leaning towards, but the one major reform recommended by the review panel – ending bulk collection of Americans' mobile phone records, which includes numbers called, dates, and times — isn't likely to happen anytime soon. That's because the NSA just won court approval to keep collecting all that metadata for the next 90 days. But Sec Prtizker did say that there needed to be balance between security and privacy, and that the White House was even considering quantifying the economic losses surveillance might have on businesses. Sec Pritzker didn't address concerns that the National Institute for the Standards of Technology (NIST), a Commerce Department agency that sets the country's cryptography standards, may have deliberately left standards weak to allow for NSA spying. But during her wide-ranging talk, Sec Pritzker also addressed a number of tech community hot button issues.
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