Network Neutrality

[Commentary] The proposed witness list for a September network neutrality hearing at the House Commerce Committee betrays a dismaying ignorance about why net neutrality is an issue.

The committee set the hearing up as something of a clash of titans, inviting the chief executives of the largest broadband providers and the biggest Internet companies, such as Google, Facebook and Netflix. The only thing missing was a steel cage. The point of having net neutrality rules isn’t to protect multibillion-dollar Internet companies. It’s to give other companies a chance to join or topple them. The rapid pace of technological change makes even companies with enormous economies of scale vulnerable to disruption, especially when consumers can easily switch from one shiny online object to the next. Curiously, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai and other Republicans have voiced less concern about the prospects of these smaller online businesses — the ones likely to inject a crucial dose of innovation into the 21st century economy — than the ability of giant, consolidating broadband providers to invest in faster, more widely available services. Better broadband connections in rural America, poverty-stricken inner cities and other underserved areas is a most worthy goal. But those connections shouldn’t come at the cost of net neutrality.

If Republican lawmakers don’t like applying decades-old utility-style regulation to broadband providers, they need to work with Democrats to give the commission explicit new authority to protect the open Internet from interference. Otherwise, the fight over how to do that will be always-on too.

By this Order, the Federal Communications Commission extends the deadline for filing reply comments in response to the Restoring Internet Freedom Notice of Proposed Rulemaking until August 30, 2017. The Restoring Internet Freedom Notice of Proposed Rulemaking set dates for filing comments and reply comments of July 17 and August 16, 2017, respectively. While it is the policy of the Commission that “extensions shall not be routinely granted,” we find that an extension of the reply comment deadline is appropriate in this case in order to allow interested parties to respond to the record in this proceeding. We find that permitting interested parties an additional two weeks in which to file their reply comments will allow parties to provide the Commission with more thorough comments, ensuring that the Commission has a complete record on which to develop its decisions.

[Commentary] There is a long-standing tradition in American politics that when your term of office is over, you retreat quietly into the background and allow a tasteful period of time to pass before you get back into the arena. Former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, however, does not appear to have bought into that tradition. Wheeler, apparently unhappy about the efforts of his successor, Ajit Pai, to undo the former chairman's signature regulatory enactment— the imposition of legacy common carrier price regulation on the internet—has continued to advocate for the survival of the regulatory structures he instituted while in office. It is difficult to see how the former chairman's internet policy is likely to make broadband services more available, better, or cheaper.

Whatever the role the FCC has to play in the modern communications market, Wheeler's retrogressive regulatory approach is counterproductive. America appears now to be suffering the consequences of it. If, as the data appear to suggest, Wheeler's signature regulatory contribution has cost the nation billions in network investment, reduced employment by 100,000 telecommunications jobs per year, and slowed improvements in broadband quality, it is incumbent on his successor to press forward with the clean-up hastily. Happily, Chairman Pai appears intent on doing precisely that. The sooner the broadband industry gets to say, “good riddance” to the Wheeler FCC's Title II regulatory regime, the better.

[Ford is Chief Economist of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies]

[Commentary] The more we debate Title II versus Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act, the more it is clear that everyone wants the same outcome: we all want an open internet. The issue is determining which path will best enable the internet to be most accessible to Americans for opportunity, innovation and entrepreneurship, with the requisite transparency and privacy protections. Let’s end this debate once and for all.

A bipartisan Congress should put its differences aside to create a federal law that governs the internet. The solution to this is problem is not whether we go with Title I or Title II — the solution lies in “Title X,” a new law that will expressly set out the rules of the road for the entire internet ecosystem. The simple fact is — and I think most of us agree — that we do not want anyone to arbitrarily block or slow content on the web. We do not want discrimination in the flow of traffic on the internet. We want transparency in how our internet usage is impacted by Internet service providers (ISPs), edge providers and the government. Further, as we build out these digital networks, every community must be free of digital and infrastructure redlining.

Title X would be a law that harmonizes the ecosystem that has nurtured the innovation and led to the U.S. becoming a global leader in speed, access and adoption, while ensuring strong consumer protections — across all platforms and regardless of their provider. If ever we needed an X factor, we need it now, if we are to maximize the power and the promise of the internet.

[Kim Keenan is the president and CEO of Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council]

Network neutrality advocates have set Sept 27 for their next coordinated protest of rolling back the Title II classification, as the Republican-majority Federal Communications Commission has proposed. The July 12 network Day of Action was an online and FCC-centric protest, the Sept 27 Day of Advocacy will be about facetime with policymakers, both on the Hill and at the FCC. According to Public Knowledge, one of the backers of the protest, the September event will feature participants going to Capitol Hill to make their case. The next day the protest will move to the FCC for the monthly open meeting to "let the commissioners know how you feel about net neutrality."

Apparently, House Commerce Committee Republican leadership got together, both in person and by phone, with the major trade associations on both sides of the network neutrality issue August 7 in a series of meeting throughout the day to discuss possible legislative pathways to clarifying the Federal Communications Commission’s network neutrality authority. The associations involved, according to sources, included NCTA: The Internet and Television Association, CTIA (the wireless industry), USTelecom, and the Internet Association. The associations were asked for, and answered with, suggestions for changes, updates, and input, or alternatives, based on a starting point of draft bills dating back a couple of years that included no blocking, throttling, or paid prioritization, though with paid prioritization language that was flexible enough not to be a blanket prohibition, say, only prohibiting “anti-competitive” or discriminatory paid prioritization.

[Commentary] More than 15 million comments have been filed with the Federal Communications Commission on its Restoring Internet Freedom docket, which focuses on the concept of net neutrality, and specifically Title II regulations imposed in 2015 under the previous administration. While this colossal number includes many sentiments – including an unsettling number of foreign and some 6 million fake comments – it does not contain significant representation from poor, minority and senior Americans. Media and communications scholars have documented that online activism is the province of the digital elite and largely aligns with race and class. Herein lies an unsettling problem.

"Digital democracy" has been promoted to enable underrepresented consumers to become more politically involved. This seems intuitive, but the reality is that digitization can, if anything, exacerbate the problem of these individuals not participating. The reality is that Title II ignores and hurts underserved communities. It prohibits a free market for data which allows these individuals to enjoy free and reduced price content and offerings. It has cost the nation some $35 billion annually in lost participation from content-side actors and advertisers which would otherwise support internet access to these groups. It is also responsible for deterring the creation of some 750,000 jobs.

[Roslyn Layton is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute’s Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy.]

While the Internet seems ubiquitous, digital divides remain, particularly across incomes. In the US, adults making less than $30,000 per year are significantly less likely to use any type of digital device and to have broadband Internet access in their home. The 2015 Open Internet Order was adopted, in part, to reduce the divide by expediting broadband deployment and removing obstacles to the market.

In their recent work “The Digital Divide and Other Economic Considerations for Network Neutrality,” authors Michelle Connolly, Clement Lee, and Renhao Tan question whether or not the 2015 OIO is likely to help bridge the digital divide. They argue that despite its rhetoric, the 2015 OIO did not properly consider its effect on the digital divide. In fact, net neutrality rules may depress investment, exacerbate the digital divide, and decrease the quality and diversity of Internet content.

Imagine if you took every single gripe you've had with Verizon over the past five years — the time it blocked Nexus 7 tablets for five months; the time it forced you to pay $20 per month for tethering; the time it tried to make you use a mobile wallet app called "ISIS" — and finally put your foot down. For a year, you spend free moments holed up in library stacks, speaking with experts, and researching and writing a sprawling legal complaint about the company's many, many misdeeds. And then you file it all with the Federal Communications Commission, hoping to get some payback. That's exactly what Alex Nguyen did. And one day very soon, Verizon may have to answer for it.

When he wrapped up in the middle of 2016, Nguyen paid a $225 filing fee and handed his complaint over to the FCC. It would end up being the only formal complaint filed under the net neutrality rules. Now one year after Nguyen's initial filing date, all the arguing is over, and the case is the in hands of the commission's Enforcement Bureau to either shoot down, deliver a fine, or demand Verizon make some changes. "Verizon and I made our cases," Nguyen said. "It looks as though [the FCC's Enforcement Bureau] staff any day now could make a decision."

AT&T’s CFO John Stephens said that FirstNet’s pre-emption requirements for public safety users present “a challenge with the net neutrality process because you are giving prioritized service to police, firefighters.” “But quite frankly I think everyone would agree that that’s probably a good thing,” explained Stephens. "It’s just one of the uniquenesses of some of the other arguments that we have to deal with.”

When questioned about the topic further, Stephens said that net neutrality proponents didn’t really take FirstNet’s public-safety pre-emption requirements into account when drafting net neutrality guidelines. “We have the ability today to give [FirstNet public-safety users] preferential treatment. What we’ll have by the end of the year is what we call ‘relentless pre-emption,’ such that if there’s capacity for 10 calls and 10 calls are being used, and a firefighter gets on, one of the 10 people gets booted off and the firefighter gets in,” he said. “Quite frankly, I don’t think they thought about it [when crafting net neutrality guidelines]. The FirstNet process has been around since 9/11. It came out of the 9/11 events, and so that had been out there for a long time, and so I don’t even think it was even considered.”