NARUC/NECA Notebook...
The FCC should regulate all broadband services as a Title 1 information service, said Tom Tauke, Verizon senior vp-public policy and external affairs. Telling NARUC and NECA that federal broadband policy hadn’t caught up with technology or markets, he said the FCC should use its current regulation of cable broadband service as a model for all broadband offerings. Tauke said regulations hadn’t changed much since he called for a regulatory philosophy of “old wires, old rules; new wires, new rules” nearly 2 years ago. “We still have no national broadband policy. We need action,” he said. However, he expressed confidence that the FCC would “get it right” when it releases its Triennial Review order. If the FCC were to regulate all broadband services under Title 1 regulations, it still would retain oversight over the service and act if needed, he said. Tauke said Verizon was upgrading its network and would add 10 million broadband customers this year. He said the future of broadband for ILECs was fiber-to-the-home (FTTH). However, new deployments “run into a wall” of regulations that prevent build-outs, including FTTH, he said. Tauke described the Internet as a “value chain,” with many providers having access to customers. He said content providers should be allowed unfettered access to consumers and broadband providers shouldn’t be allowed to interfere with content distribution. -- TL
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A session on digital content protection on the heels of 2 critical court decisions created the potential for fireworks, but having done such panels so many times in the past, the participants were mostly civil and no new ground was broken. Verizon Assoc. Gen. Counsel Sarah Deutsch -- whose company lost its attempt for a stay of an order granting RIAA access to ISP customer records -- said content companies weren’t honoring a deal made on access to records when the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was passed. MPAA VP-Gen. Counsel Fritz Attaway responded that the ISPs were concerned about being free from liability and the DMCA offered them that, then suggested that protection need not remain. Deutsch then drew applause from the audience of state regulators when she called Attaway “thuggish” for threatening “to take away our protection under the law.”
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State regulators were urged Mon. not to regulate Wi-Fi. As Intel Dir.-Communications Policy Peter Pitsch said: “It wouldn’t be prudent for regulators to get in the middle of this while the market is still sorting itself out.” Along with introducing Centrino chips for laptops that have Wi-Fi embedded, Intel Capital has said it would spend $500 million in Wi-Fi investments and already has done so in more than 100 companies. T-Mobile’s Laura Altschul said many state and local regulators seemed inclined to intervene on the basis of voice-over-IP or right-of-way issues, which she called “absolutely not necessary.” Consumers would be harmed by anything that delayed the creation of ubiquitous Wi-Fi coverage, she said. Pitsch predicted Wi-Fi’s rapid growth would get a further boost soon when the World Radio Conference was likely to promote an additional 255 MHz of spectrum in the 5 GHz band, where 802.11a operates. But Wireless Communications Assn. Pres. Andrew Kreig said “land- based wireless is underrepresented at world conferences” and thus traditionally has been at a disadvantage. There was general agreement, including from Altschul, that wireless phone and Wi-Fi services were complementary, but Pitsch said Wi-Fi could prove to be an outright competitor to DSL. Most Wi-Fi hot spots are an extension of a landline broadband connection such as T1, cable modem or DSL, but Pitsch said Vivato was offering steered-beam antennas that could provide Wi-Fi coverage for miles, obviating the need for other solutions in that area.
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The FCC should “reject the entreaty” of a coalition intent on bogging down cable modem service in a “regulatory thicket,” NCTA Pres. Robert Sachs said Mon. Referring to a group including Amazon.com, CEA, Consumers Union, Disney, Media Access Project and Microsoft that last week urged the FCC to ensure “unfettered access” to the Internet for cable modem users, Sachs said the group sought to burden cable with “common carrier-style regulation.” “Cable operators have no desire to restrict where a customer can go or what a customer can do on the Net,” he said: “Put another way, cable broadband Web usage should be managed by the bandwidth consumed, and not by the character of its content.” Sachs reiterated his bullish outlook on cable modem service, saying there now were more than 12 million subscribers and 4 out of 5 cable homes were passed by the service.