Precursor

[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 The Wheeler-FCC broadband privacy order deserved to be rescinded by Congress because it was not a fairly-represented, legitimate privacy regulation.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] Encryption/Wiretap: expect that the President-elect Trump Federal Communications Commission and/or Congress to ensure smartphones are subject to the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act, CALEA, like all other communications technologies were before smartphones, so that the FBI can continue to wiretap, investigate and thwart terrorism (ISIS etc.), and crime, like it routinely did prior to the smartphone era. Expect this update of longstanding policy despite vehement tech opposition from Apple, Google, Facebook, et al.

Spectrum Acutions: expect President Trump and/or Congress to rescind the Obama Administration 2013 Executive Order favoring sharing of government spectrum over the longstanding, bipartisan, successful policy of increasingly commercializing under-utilized government spectrum via public auctions, an action that could generate well over a hundred billion dollars of additional scorable revenue over ten years, that could help fund various Republican fiscal priorities without adding to the budget deficit.

Title II Utility Broadband Regulation: Expect the Trump-FCC, Congress and/or Courts to overturn the FCC’s Open Internet Order one way or another, because it has non-existent Republican support given that it was unnecessary and unwarranted, and given that it is purely the creation of a partisan, three-vote, FCC majority over strenuous Republican opposition. With no Open Internet Order authority, eventually there will be: no Title II privacy order authority; no FCC-FTC privacy authority jurisdictional conflict; no new FCC-protected class of “edge providers;” and practically no “zero-rating” issue.

[Scott Cleland is President of Precursor, LLC]