Scott Cleland

[Commentary] If you are an advertiser, Web publisher, or developer, there is no real competitive choice. You have to use Google for search advertising and Facebook for social advertising if you want to reach the global Internet audience. And if you're a global seller of goods and services, you have to sell wholesale through Amazon, because it offers access to several times more online buyers than any other online retailer. Some will object and say these cloud network providers (CNPs) are not Internet network providers, in part because they are network neutrality allies.

But like Internet service providers, these CNPs lease or own vast networks of fiber and undersea cable connections between their data centers, encryption proxy networks, and video distribution nodes in most every country in the world. In sum, the big four ISPs are not uniquely powerful Internet networks. The evidence overwhelmingly indicates that Internet giants are vastly more powerful in nearly every dimension.

[Scott Cleland is president of Precursor LLC and chairman of NetCompetition]

[Commentary] Here are the core six terms with double meanings that torment net neutrality consensus: Internet, net neutrality, free, open, competition, and economics.

Internet: Internet service providers see themselves as an integral part of the Internet...[h]owever, proponents of net neutrality...want to define ISPs as Title II telephone utilities, and the physical hardware part of the Internet as the public switched telephone network, to effectively redefine the Internet on their terms as “the edge” made up of only “edge,” software or virtual providers.
Net Neutrality: The snowballing definition now has many net neutrality proponents seeing net neutrality as the same as 1934 monopoly telephone utility law which regulated telecommunications as a common carrier.
Free: Increasingly proponents of Title II net neutrality define “free” as no-cost or a price of zero. However, opponents define “free” as shorthand for individual freedom, since most people pay for Internet access most of the time.
Open: Proponents define open as the strongest possible utility regulation, and non-proprietary, like open-source software that confers no property rights. Opponents see an open market as a deregulated market.
Competition: Proponents and the previous Federal Communications Commission, defined broadband competition as government-managed competition where the government determines some prices, terms and conditions of ISPs to advantage edge providers. In contrast, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai defines broadband competition as market-driven competition between facilities-based providers of broadband Internet access, and where consumers pick winners and losers.
Economics: Many of the most ardent net neutrality supporters consider the Internet like a public common, ie online resources that do not require payment of permission to use. In contrast to most other people, including Chairman Pai and Commissioner Mike O’Rielly, believe in the market organizing principle of the economics of scarcity, where pricing must ultimately reflect total costs, not cherry-picked marginal costs, and supply and demand.

[Scott Cleland is president of Precursor LLC and the chairman of NetCompetition]

[Commentary] Google plans to introduce an ad-blocking feature in the mobile and desktop versions of its popular Chrome browser. Consider Google’s hypocrisy.

The company supported network neutrality, or the idea that Internet service providers should be prohibited from blocking content on the Internet. Google is now seeking to engage in exactly that activity, which it had claimed was among the worst sins possible. Maybe they rationalize that since Google’s heart is in the right place and their words on net neutrality are the correct ones, they can trust that Google would never discriminate against another edge provider or garage start-up by blocking or throttling their free and open choice of ad model. They reason that Google would never be like a big, bad Internet service provider.

This brings us to the second problem that is particular to Google, when it comes to ad blocking without accountability and legitimacy measures that ensure, and independently confirm, Google is are not being anti-competitive. It is more than ironic that Google has demonized ISPs for having the potential to block Internet traffic under the “principle” of net neutrality, and demonized copyright interests’ efforts to shut down notorious piracy websites as “censorship.”

[Scott Cleland is president of Precursor LLC and chairman of NetCompetition]

[Commentary] At best the notions of network neutrality and consumer privacy are somewhat in tension. At worst, they are in opposition, and harm consumer privacy as happened when the Wheeler-Federal Communications Commission subordinated the goal of what’s best for consumer privacy to the conflicting and overriding goal of what was best for imposing maximal, Title II net neutrality.

The FCC forced a monopoly telephone privacy approach, that assumes that one entity (an ISP) is closed and can totally control the potential dissemination of network information that a consumer chooses to be private, when the FCC knows full well that it can’t possibly ensure that that information be kept private overall, because of the way an “open” and “neutral” Internet works today. The Wheeler-FCC broadband privacy order deserved to be rescinded by Congress because it was not a fairly-represented, legitimate privacy regulation. The Wheeler-FCC knew it could not ensure that the information that a consumer requested be kept private, could be kept private in the way a consumer expected.

[Cleland is president of Precursor LLC and chairman of NetCompetition, a pro-competition e-forum supported by broadband interests.]

[Commentary] Consumer privacy has been the biggest loser from network neutrality proponents’ politicization of privacy. Congress was right to rescind the Title II broadband privacy order passed by the Federal Communications Commission in October. The order took a nonpartisan public policy issue substantively unrelated to net neutrality, consumer privacy, and unnecessarily turning it into a partisan issue. Essentially, the House and Senate’s rescissions of the unimplemented rules restored the privacy status quo. It also creates the opportunity to free consumer privacy interests from the unproductive clutches of the Title II net neutrality or nothing, hyper-politicization of communications issues, going forward.

[Scott Cleland is president of Precursor LLC and Chairman of NetCompetition, a pro-competition e-forum supported by broadband interests]

[Commentary] Let the competition to build 5G broadband facilities begin! Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai in his early actions and speeches is returning the FCC to supporting the policies that delivered the most facilities-based broadband competition and private investment of any country in the world, and that also produced rapid deployment of at least five competitive broadband facilities to 95 percent of Americans in a little over a decade.

Chairman Pai and Commissioner Mike O’Rielly know that promoting facilities-based broadband competition proved highly successful before, and it can be as successful again in ensuring that America’s current lead in 4G LTE broadband deployment continues with strong 5G private investment and deployment going forward.

[Cleland is president of Precursor LLC and chairman of NetCompetition, a pro-competition e-forum supported by broadband interests.]

[Commentary] Unlike the Federal Communications Commission’s previous head, new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is putting consumers first, not network neutrality. The sad reality is that the previous FCC did the bidding of the biggest edge providers, both on the issue of net neutrality and opening up the cable box market.

Net neutrality began as a bipartisan, unanimous FCC policy statement in 2005 that ensured consumers could competitively access and use the legal content, apps, and devices of their choice, subject to reasonable network management. In 2009, net neutrality ceased being about consumers, and all about edge providers, when Professor Tim Wu, the one who coined the term “net neutrality,” redefined it to become about consumers economically subsidizing edge providers. By replacing Title II net neutrality price regulation with free market competition that naturally puts customers in charge, Chairman Pai can reverse mistakes made during the Obama administration, and bring a truly pro-consumer focus back to his agency.

[Scott Cleland is president of Precursor LLC and chairman of NetCompetition.]

[Commentary] The most modern part of America’s economy – communications – suffers under America’s most out-of-date law and most backward-looking regulation. In the absence of Congress passing a modern communications law for the 21st century, it can be hard to see what a modern Federal Communications Commission would or should look like.

As the new FCC, led by Republican Chairman Ajit Pai, organizes and focuses on how to legitimately mitigate and reverse the previous FCC’s most retrograde technology-driven regulations, it is much easier to know what is not a modern FCC.

[Scott Cleland is president of Precursor LLC and chairman of NetCompetition]

[Commentary] The window of opportunity for negotiating a legislative compromise on reasonable network neutrality protections is 2017. The 2015 assumptions supporting the old political calculus all collapsed with the election outcome. If supporters believe net neutrality is an enduring principle and protection worthy of being put into law, and not just politics, then a reasonable bipartisan compromise should be possible.

A critical point here that many are missing is that the old net neutrality political calculus was not about net neutrality itself. It was about the FCC asserting and gaining court deference so it could de facto legislate Internet policy over time via unbounded, sweeping, regulatory authority. In short, the election completely upended the old net neutrality political calculus. Net neutrality supporters would be wise to take the proverbial bird in hand of a legislative compromise now, rather than betting they can grasp for the two birds in the bush whenever they want. Time will tell if enough Senate Democrats consider net neutrality a substantive policy worth preserving.

[Scott Cleland is President of Precursor LLC chairman of NetCompetition, a pro-competition e-forum supported by broadband interests.]

[Commentary] A week before the transition to the new administration, the Federal Communications Commission’s Wireless Bureau issued a report about mobile “zero-rating” plans, which provide consumers the option of free data usage paid by advertising. This zero-rating kerfuffle exposes that network neutrality has transmogrified from the FCC’s original net neutrality purpose of protecting consumers’ freedom to competitively access and use the legal content, apps, and devices of their choice, to potentially taking away consumer’s freedom to access cost-saving content and apps of their choice on the device of their choice. How can the FCC claim to be pro-consumer, and then tell consumers that more consumer choice, control, and savings are a net neutrality violation?

The dirty little secret that the FCC does not want people to know is that Title II net neutrality is implicit FCC price regulation that by design forces consumers to subsidize corporations, the exact opposite of how the FCC implemented Title II historically before competition, where corporations’ communications bills always subsidized consumers’ communications bills.

[Scott Cleland is president of Precursor LLC.]