Game Of Phones: How Verizon Is Playing The FCC And Its Customers

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission will start deciding the future of the Internet. It’s an emotional, controversial, drawn-out battle that has been building for years, pitting some of the biggest Internet providers in the world against the government, American citizens, and virtually every denizen of the web.

A new report with previously unseen documents set to be published by New York’s Public Utility Law Project (PULP) demonstrates how Verizon deliberately moves back and forth between regulatory regimes, classifying its infrastructure either like a heavily regulated telephone network or a deregulated information service depending on its needs.

The chicanery has allowed Verizon to raise telephone rates, all the while missing commitments for high-speed Internet deployment. Why would Verizon -- which, like all big telecom companies, is generally averse to government regulation -- make a point of repeatedly noting that its fiber network fell under the same strict rules as the telephone system?

There are two reasons. First, Title II designation gives carriers broad power to compel other utilities -- power, water, and so on -- to give them access to existing infrastructure for a federally controlled price, which makes it simpler and more cost-effective for cables to be run. And that infrastructure adds up: poles, ducts, conduits running beneath roads, the list goes on.

Second, Title II gave Verizon a unique opportunity to justify boosting telephone rates in discussions with regulators, arguing that these phone calls would run over the same fiber used by FiOS, Verizon’s home Internet service.