November 2014

Egyptian Journalists Protest Editors’ Pledge Not to Criticize State

Hundreds of Egyptian journalists objected to a pledge by newspaper editors to refrain from publishing reports critical of the government, calling the curb on freedom of expression “a victory for terrorism.”

More than 350 journalists signed an online statement responding to the editors. It was a rare instance of public dissent since the military takeover 16 months ago and the first hint of discontent within the news media over its near-unanimous support for the government. “The terrorists will win when they can control the media, and the state will fall when it agrees on the same goal,” the journalists argued. “Confronting terrorism is a duty and an honor, and it has nothing to do with the nationalization of the press or the voluntary abandonment of freedom of speech.”

Reaction to Latest FCC Net neutrality trial Balloon

After news broke that the Federal Communications Commission is considering separating broadband into two distinct services… well, everyone has an opinion.

Public Knowledge, a public interest group that has backed strong rules, sounded cautiously optimistic. “"We're very pleased to see that the FCC Chairman is moving towards a Title II framework for creating rules to protect an open internet. Although there are many details that do not appear to have been worked out, we are confident that the proposal they're considering could use Title II and other regulatory tools in a manner that effectively addresses the most important issues in the debate,” group president Gene Kimmelman said. Still, Kimmelman called for the FCC to ban online “fast lanes” that could harm the public.
Free Press was not supportive. "This Frankenstein proposal is no treat for Internet users, and they shouldn't be tricked,” said Free Press President and CEO Craig Aaron. “No matter how you dress it up, any rules that don’t clearly restore the agency's authority and prevent specialized fast lanes and paid prioritization aren’t real Net Neutrality.”
Anna Galland, the executive director of MoveOn’s advocacy arm warned that the plan would “undermine” net neutrality and “betray” President Obama’s plans to ban “fast lanes.”
Fight for the Future, an activist group, said that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler ought to be fired over his “sham proposal.”
Walter McCormick, the head of USTelecom, a broadband industry trade group, called the approach “byzantine” and said it “defies legal precedent and common sense.” The proposal “would be an invitation to protracted litigation,” he added, and “would only guarantee continued uncertainty and debate well into the next administration.”
The National Cable and Telecommunications Association, another trade group, would oppose the reported plan, a spokesman said.
AT&T said that the agency’s use of the common carrier rules “would be problematic.”
"King Solomon wasn’t serious when he proposed splitting the baby. Let’s hope Chairman Wheeler isn’t either. Subjecting any part of broadband to Title II opens the door to FCC regulation of the heart of the Internet," said TechFreedom president Berin Szoka.

Network Neutrality and Peering: Could Proposal Give FCC Tighter Control?

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission’s latest network neutrality plan raises important questions about Internet traffic exchange, which has been a hot topic over the last couple of years.

The quality of the end user experience depends not only on bandwidth and packet priority but also on the quality of the connection between the broadband provider serving the end user and the broadband provider serving the content provider. These interconnection agreements have been largely out of FCC control and there have been numerous disputes over the last couple of years between the two different types of providers. Some of the providers serving consumers -- including large telcos like Verizon and large cable companies like Comcast -- have required providers serving content companies to pay interconnection fees because they send more traffic to the consumers than they receive from the consumers. The providers serving the content companies say they shouldn’t have to pay interconnection fees if they deliver traffic to a point close to the end consumer, requiring the consumer broadband provider to carry traffic only for a relatively short distance. It’s whether the proposal would give the FCC oversight over Internet interconnection agreements.

The FCC’s “half-pregnant” plan for network neutrality, and why it won’t work

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission is considering separating broadband into two distinct services: a retail one, in which consumers would pay broadband providers for Internet access; and a back-end one, in which broadband providers serve as the conduit for websites to distribute content. The FCC would then classify the back-end service as a common carrier, giving the agency the ability to police any deals between content companies and broadband providers.

This approach echoes a scheme floated by the Mozilla Foundation. The Mozilla trick is based on a legal slight-of-hand that redefines just who net neutrality involves in the first place. Rather than treating consumers as the beneficiaries of net neutrality obligations (as the idea has always be understood), the Mozilla definition would instead treat websites (or, “edge providers”) as the customers. This would have the effect of applying the public utility provision to a different set of actors at a deeper layer of the internet, rather than to the “last mile” at which the ISPs come into people’s living rooms. If that sounds complicated and hard to follow, that’s because it is.

It also won’t work. As Stanford professor Barbara Van Schewick explains, ideas like Mozilla’s “were put forward in good faith and with great creativity” but obvious legal deficiencies “would sink sender-side proposals in court.”

Mozilla, FCC Talk Hybrid Net Neutrality Approach

Mozilla executives have met twice with Federal Communications Commission General Counsel Jonathan Sallet in the past two weeks to talk about its proposal to create a hybrid Title II/Sec 706 approach to legally sustain new Open Internet rules.

Mozilla has suggested that the FCC treat ISPs’ connection for an implied fee of a remote end point (remote edge provider, or REP) to an individual subscriber as a Title II telecommunications service, and its connection for a fee to end users of all those REP's as a Sec 706 information service. Under that regime, it suggests, the FCC could prevent blocking or throttling in the relationship between ISP's and edge providers under Title II, and prevent anti-competitive paid priority on the last-mile, consumer facing side under Sec. 706 by presuming paid priority to be a violation of the anti-unreasonable discrimination rule, but making it a rebuttable presumption with a high bar.

Title II Reclassification and the Price Regulation of Retail Broadband Services

[Commentary] While I am not aware of any call for the Federal Communications Commission to regulate retail broadband prices, the legal requirements of Title II do not simply bend to the agency’s or advocates’ desires.

If paid prioritization is to be regulated, then price is to be regulated, and under Title II the price regulation of a carrier-to-consumer service is executed via tariffs. Forbearance of price regulation via tariff might be a sensible strategy if not for (at least) two hurdles: (1) forbearance is the surrendering of the agency’s control of price to the market and network neutrality appears now to be about the regulatory control of price (i.e., a ban on paid prioritization); and (2) the FCC’s precedent on forbearance and its claims about industry structure interfere with a straightforward forbearance determination. If the agency believes net neutrality rules are required, then the path set forth in its 2014 Open Internet NPRM seems to be the most sensible approach, especially since, as Rep Henry Waxman (D-CA) recently conceded, Title II cannot be used to prohibit paid prioritization. As such, Title II reclassification is not just messy, costly and legally risky, but it’s also an impotent strategy for achieving the ostensible goals net neutrality.

The basic truth about internet access that cable and phone companies don't want you to know

The American cities that are delivering best-in-the-world broadband speeds at bargain prices are precisely the cities that aren't relying on Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Time-Warner, etc. to run their infrastructure.

In Kansas City, Google built a state-of-the-art fiber optic network largely just to prove a point. In Chattanooga and Lafayette, the government did it. At the moment, the US federal government could issue 5-year bonds at a 1.58 percent interest rate and make grants to cities interested in following Chattanooga and Lafayette down that path. But it doesn't happen, because while broadband incumbents don't want to spend the money it would take to build state-of-the-art fiber networks, they are happy to spend money on lobbying. So even though we have the technical ability to deliver cheap, super-fast internet and we have the financial ability to finance the construction, we don't actually have the network. In fact, we're so in hock to the interests of the broadband incumbents that we don't even use all the fiber networks we've already built.

How to Fight Telecom Gameplaying

[Commentary] The interconnection battle has been framed as one between Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and others on one side and Netflix on the other. A better way to think of it might be to put the eyeball networks on one side and the future on the other.

What about the next Netflix (or any other business that Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner Cable, AT&T or CenturyLink view as competitive with their own)? What about all the other businesses that will be affected when Comcast finds the next network connection it wants to squeeze? Here’s what the Federal Communications Commission needs to do: first, it needs to examine how packets are actually being treated at interconnection junctures with the terminating monopoly eyeball networks. Without this close look, the FCC will have no insight into how discrimination is being implemented by the eyeball networks. Then the FCC needs to create rules for interconnection deals between the terminating monopolies and everyone else. These rules could require, for example, that the eyeball networks not be allowed to charge more for interconnection than it actually costs to set up the equipment needed to interconnect. Unless such rules are in place, other businesses and American consumers will continue to be squeezed.

[Crawford is the John A. Reilly Visiting Professor in Intellectual Property, Harvard Law School]

The Unpredictable FCC: Politicizing Communications Policy and its Threat to Broadband Investment

[Commentary] Under Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act, the Federal Communications Commission is charged with encouraging “the deployment of advanced telecommunications services to all Americans.” To support the private investment required to fulfill this mandate, all five of the FCC's Commissioners have professed a desire to provide investors with “regulatory certainty.”

Building, maintaining, and upgrading telecommunications networks requires massive and sustained, long-term investments, and uncertainty about regulatory policy that could threaten returns makes firms reluctant to invest. Despite the FCC acknowledging the importance of regulatory certainty to the deployment of modern broadband infrastructure, the reality remains that over the last few years the FCC has become entirely unpredictable, largely, we believe, because of the increased politicization of the agency's deliberative process. Indeed, over the past five years the FCC either has reversed, or is threatening to reverse, some of the most significant bi-partisan deregulatory achievements of the past two decades. This dramatic reversal of FCC policy is a catalyst of uncertainty.

[Ford is the chief economist and Spiwak is the president of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies]

FCC Announces Tentative Agenda For November 2014 Open Meeting

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler announced that the following items will tentatively be on the agenda for the next open meeting scheduled for Friday, November 21, 2014:

Modernizing Contest Rules: The Commission will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to provide broadcasters greater flexibility in their disclosure of contest terms.
Emerging Wireline Networks and Services: The Commission will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Declaratory Ruling, and Order to facilitate the transition to next generation networks by promoting and preserving the Commission’s public safety, consumer protection, and competition goals.
911 Governance and Accountability: The Commission will consider a Policy Statement and Notice of Proposed Rulemaking regarding its approach to 911 governance and proposing mechanisms to ensure continued accountability for reliable 911 services as technologies evolve.

Benton

Search