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February 2016

Fight over regulating Internet rates intensifies

Republicans on the House Commerce Committee’s communications subcommittee are expected to advance a bill they say is aimed at making sure the Federal Communications Commission does not use its new rules to regulate and set the monthly rates that Internet service providers charge customers.

Republicans tried and failed to insert the language into a spending bill in 2015. But network neutrality advocates caution the single paragraph bill is overly broad, and is likely a guise to blunt other consumer protections at the FCC. The FCC's rules specifically avoid applying those kind of utility-style rate regulations, through a process known as forbearance. Democrats will offer their own amendment that would codify the FCC's forbearance language. Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) said that the GOP legislation would make sure "no future FCC abuses" its power. The Democratic amendment is meant to call Republicans' bluff on the legislation's "stated goal."

"[I]t was my sincere hope that we would reach agreement on the two net neutrality-related bills under consideration at today’s markup," said Subcommittee Ranking Member Anna Eshoo (D-CA). "Unfortunately we have not, despite many hours of staff time, working in consultation with the FCC, academic experts, public interest groups, industry and other key stakeholders for technical guidance."

Should India's Internet Be Free Of Charge, Or Free Of Control?

The battle to persuade regulators to halt Facebook's introduction to the Internet has been a boisterous one.

Netizens in India derided "Free Basics" as "a digital land grab" and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg a modern-day colonizer. One of Facebook's own board members caused an uproar on social media when he also compared Free Basics to colonialism, and forced Zuckerberg to disown the "deeply upsetting" remark. India's telecom regulators acknowledge that providing free service for the poor is a worthwhile endeavor, and say the government is pursuing options. But they find that discounted pricing including free schemes puts small content providers outside such schemes at a disadvantage, thus creating barriers for entry into a non-level-playing field.

Sadanand Dhume, who writes about the South Asian political economy and society at the American Enterprise Institute, calls the opponents of Free Basics "purists." "What they are looking at is some kind of abstract, pure debate. And what they are not looking at is the reality of India," he says. The reality, Dhume says, is that nearly 1 billion of India's nearly 1.3 billion population have no way to go online.

A dangerous tech policy narrative emerges: Decreasing choice to increase freedom

[Commentary] More and more, tech policy ideas embrace obvious contradictions and lean on manufactured numbers masquerading as data that, in reality, would not deserve a passing grade in elementary school math. The result is that they hurt the very people they claim to want to help:

  • Prohibiting fast lanes on the Internet hurts small content providers who need economical ways to differentiate themselves from the likes of Google. Differentiation is key to success in tech markets.
  • Prohibitions on sponsored data, also known as zero rating, make broadband services less affordable for the poor.
  • FCC Chairman Wheeler justified new regulations of set-top boxes (STBs) by quoting (without attribution) a “study” claiming that the devices have increased in price by 185% since 1994. That result is at best an apples to oranges comparison of 1994 STBs that only descrambled channels to 2015 STBs that record, handle high-definition content, and support two-way interactivity, among other features.
  • The FCC redefined broadband, choosing a speed that only a limited number customers are buying and then claiming market failure.

Why is this happening? It appears to be a combination of rent seeking — where a business, bureaucracy or politician seeks regulations that give them a bigger slice of the economic pie without enlarging the pie itself — and a view of tech policy that conflates control with freedom.

[Jamison is the director and Gunter Professor of the Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida]

The year the pay gap disappeared

A new California law makes it illegal for women and men in similar positions to be paid differently. And the Obama Administration has proposed requiring all companies employing more than 100 people report to the federal government what they pay workers broken down by job category, gender, race and ethnicity. These two measures may finally move the needle on the issue. To meet the new federal requirement, if it is approved as expected, companies will have to have more awareness of any pay gaps and start looking at how to address the issue.

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