Network Neutrality

Rep Michael Doyle (D-PA) accused Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai of pursuing an agenda that harms both consumers and small businesses. "Chairman Pai, in the time that you have been head of this agency, we have seen an agenda that is anti-consumer, anti-small business, anti-competition, anti-innovation, and anti-opportunity," Rep Doyle said during an FCC oversight hearing held by the House Communications Subcommittee. Rep Doyle pointed to several of Chairman Pai’s decisions, including ending a net neutrality investigation into what Rep Doyle called "anti-competitive zero-rating practices" by AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

Doyle also questioned whether anything would stop Pai's Republican majority from rolling back net neutrality rules and the classification of ISPs as common carriers. Doyle asked Pai, "what kind of comment would cause you to change your mind?" Chairman Pai responded, "economic analysis that shows credibly that there's infrastructure investment that has increased dramatically" since the net neutrality rules went into effect. Chairman Pai said he also would take evidence seriously if it shows that the overall economy would suffer from a net neutrality rollback or that startups and consumers can't thrive without the existing rules.

Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chairs Rep Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) and Mark Pocan (D-WI) respond to the Federal Communications Commission’s failure to release 47,000 public complaints that could show the American public's desire to keep the internet open and free. The comment period on a new FCC proposal to undo net neutrality was closed on July 17. National Hispanic Media Coalition had requested the comment deadline be extended until complaints against internet service providers (ISPs) were made public.

“The fact that 47,000 complaints were filed against internet providers since the rules on net neutrality went into place shows an enormous need for these consumer protections. The FCC’s failure, so far, to comply with the FOIA request gives the appearance that they would rather bury these complaints than admit that the current rules are necessary...Internet access can no longer be considered a luxury commodity for the wealthy. The rules governing the internet must ensure it remains free and open and unfortunately President Trump’s new FCC commissioner is moving in the exact opposite direction while ignoring the evidence.”

[Commentary] Minority-owned small businesses need two things to compete and thrive in an economy that is dominated more and more each year by global megafirms: a level playing field where everyone plays by the same rules of the road and stable and certain regulations that maximize their ability to invest and grow. This is true in the brick and mortar business world and even more so in the increasingly vital digital world, where a handful of dominant tech giants can use monopoly control over gateway services like search and social media and their ability to mine and exploit massive troughs of consumer data to choke off competition. That’s why the Federal Communications Commission’s plan to reform the internet regulations known as “net neutrality” is so important.

Americans deserve a permanent, stable and evenhanded net neutrality law that protects our data and fair competition online. That is something that can only be accomplished by Congress, where bipartisan support clearly exists to make net neutrality the law of the land. A law would put net neutrality beyond politics, eliminate the need to rely on legal contortions like Title II, and boost fair competition and equal opportunity everywhere online.

[Harry C. Alford is president and CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce.]

After House Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) announce that he had invited the CEOs of both Internet-based companies and broadband internet access service providers to a September hearing on network neutrality, the committee’s Democratic leadership wrote to him saying, “In your announcement of the hearing, you said the Chief Executive Officers from eight of the largest corporations in the world with a combined market capitalization of nearly $2.5 trillion had been invited to testify. Although you stated the hearing was an inquiry into the ‘internet ecosystem,’ you once again failed to recognize how important the internet is for consumers, small businesses, entrepreneurs, political organizers, public interest groups, and people looking for work. We therefore ask that you make sure that any hearing has sufficient witnesses to represent the diversity of real people who will be affected by the FCC’s efforts to roll back net neutrality,”

First, AT&T joined the Day of Action because we too support an open internet. We are and have always been against blocking, censorship and discriminatory throttling. We support transparency in internet practices. The activists were confounded. I’ll be honest, I don’t get the confusion.

AT&T has for years consistently supported the core tenets of an open internet in our advocacy, in our business practices and even in sworn testimony before Congress. But that didn’t matter. Far from embracing our support for internet freedom, the Fight for the Future crowd declared our support a deliberate effort to mislead the public, all because we share a common goal but do not embrace common means. FFF went as far as to mean-girl us by proclaiming that we couldn’t even sit at the open internet table. Is it ironic to pursue an agenda of openness through exclusionary tactics, or is it just me? If the Day of Action proved anything, it’s that there is broad consensus that the internet in America should always be a place for free expression of ideas and an open exchange of information free from censorship and blocking. The disagreement is really quite narrow.

The Federal Communications Commission is well on its way towards repealing its existing network neutrality rules, which ban internet service providers from blocking legal content, slowing down specific connections, or charging tolls for so-called "fast lanes" on the internet. But the "replace" half will fall to Congress. And that's going to be much harder.

Earlier in July Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR), a longtime net neutrality advocate, said that he would only support a net neutrality bill that provided the same level of consumer protection that the FCC's current regulations do. He also dismissed the idea that the Federal Trade Commission could enforce such rules. "This is not their beat, their beat is not communications," Sen Wyden said, echoing similar concerns from activists. Republicans could pass a bill without support from Democrats, but only if they can draft a bill that they all support. But just like replacing Obamacare, that's not as easy as it sounds.

A coming Congressional hearing on network neutrality has left the likes of Amazon, Facebook, Google and Netflix in a tough position: They can either subject their chief executives to a potential grilling — or sit it out and take plenty of political heat.

If they sit out the hearing, they might send a poor political signal — to supporters and opponents alike — at a time when the Trump administration is preparing to scrap the US government’s current net neutrality rules. For the moment, tech giants don’t have much to say about their plans. Amazon, Facebook, Google and Netflix declined to say if they would dispatch their chief executives to Congress. They have until July 31 to contact the committee about their participation. Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, haven’t yet heard from those companies, either. But the House Commerce Committee did offer an early warning: “It is our expectation that the invited individuals will attend. These CEOs are in a unique position to provide important perspectives on issues they have long been publicly vocal on,” said a spokesman for House Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR).

Tech giants that decline to attend the hearing — or try to send a lower-level executive — could incur the wrath of federal lawmakers, who are known to blast companies that don’t testify. Then again, appearing before Congress could subject the likes of Amazon’s Bezos or Netflix’s Hastings to tough, unwelcome questions — on issues that might not have to do with net neutrality at all.

Sens Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Roy Blunt (R-MO) sharply rebuked Twitter following reports that the website briefly blocked its users from posting links to a blog post that criticized the US government’s network neutrality rules. Twitter previously had described the mishap as a glitch, but Sens Johnson and Blunt still penned a letter that slammed the company’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, for an incident that appeared to lawmakers to be “an affront to free expression.”

The confusing saga began on July 12, the day that Twitter joined Facebook, Google and other tech giants for an online rally in defense of an open internet. But those who sought to share the company’s blog post could not do so on Twitter. For a time, the site marked the link as suspicious and blocked new tweets containing it. That immediately led to cries of censorship, given Twitter’s public participation in the day of action in support of net neutrality — and on the opposite side of the debate from AT&T. A Twitter spokesman at the time said the link was “erroneously caught in Twitter's anti-spam filters” and quickly remedied the mistake. But the fracas still managed to reach Capitol Hill, where Sens Johnson and Blunt on Tuesday described the incident in a letter to Dorsey as “disturbing.”

Rep Susan Brooks (R-IN) told a packed room of small and mid-sized cable operators here that the government should back away from burdensome internet regulation, and called on the crowd to help explain to consumers how the current rules could hurt. “We have to provide a framework that offers a guardrail,” said Rep Brooks, who sits on the Commerce Committee and represents most of northern Indianapolis. “But we can’t be so restrictive that we are impeding all the innovation and all the advances in technology.”

Part of the problem with building momentum for the changes is public support, and the fact that the true definition of “net neutrality” has been hijacked by some groups to fit their own point of view — and business strategy, Rep Brooks said. “We do believe in an open internet,” she said, “and we don’t believe in throttling or blocking customers’ signals for any reason." But, she said, “There is no subject more confused in the mind of the pubic than net neutrality.” “We need to figure out a way to talk about this differently,” she said, with more simplicity. “We get thousands of calls and letters on this issue. People do not understand.”

Recently, Verizon was caught and subsequently admitted to throttling all video traffic on its network. July 25, the company is finally addressing the potential network neutrality issue. Verizon said that its actions represented “reasonable network management,” which is an exception carved out under the 2015 net neutrality rules. "Video optimization is a non-discriminatory network management practice designed to ensure a high quality customer experience for all customers accessing the shared resources of our wireless network,” a spokesperson said.

It’s pretty expected that Verizon would argue this. It said last week that its video throttling was a matter of “network testing” that would be “completed shortly,” and speeds since appear to have returned to normal. The trouble is, the order is a little vague on what constitutes “reasonable network management,” since the commission assumed it might take many different forms. But it has a handful of guidelines of what might and might not violate the exception. One important limitation: the practice must be “primarily motivated by a technical network management justification rather than other business justifications.”