Government Needs to Refocus on Cyber Threat, AT&T Executive Says

The Senate Commerce Committee has “a lot of issues involving telecom and the Internet, but there’s probably no more urgent problem than cybersecurity,” Cicconi said. “It is real. It is now. It is massive, and the government has not played the role it should have all along.” Although opinions vary on whether Congress should step in on other Internet matters, “there’s nobody I know that doesn’t agree that the government ought to be playing a larger, at least coordinative role, in cybersecurity issues,” he said.

The U.S. faces a broad set of threats, but “there’s no one area of the federal government that has responsibility,” Cicconi said: “At the same time, everyone is in agreement that the Internet is vital to the American economy. The industry invested $60 billion last year to build out broadband. The government clearly wants it done.” He said attention focused on other issues should be redirected to cybersecurity. “We're spinning our wheels in the Congress and in the industry on issues that in the larger scheme of things are all hypothetical,” he said. “Net neutrality is a debate about a series of hypotheticals. There’s nothing about not neutrality that comes close to cybersecurity in terms of the danger to the Internet.”

Rockefeller just introduced cybersecurity legislation, that gives the president leeway to “declare a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic” to or from any federal or critical infrastructure network. The president also may order a disconnection “in the interest of national security.” Other provisions include a cybersecurity advisory panel, appointed by the president, to take up matters including whether “societal and civil liberty concerns are adequately addressed” and report every two years on improving U.S. cybersecurity strategy. It also creates a “real-time cybersecurity dashboard,” a system to be developed by the Commerce Department to provide “status and vulnerability information” of all government information systems.

Cicconi said he wasn’t “trying to be dismissive” and he understands “there are some real concerns” about net neutrality. Net security, on the other hand “is a very real issue and we don’t have a fraction of the focus in the federal government that advocacy groups are expecting to spend on net neutrality, which is amazing to me.” Cicconi said he wasn’t aiming his criticism at the Obama administration. “If anything, I'm being more critical with the last eight years, and actually beyond that, where cybersecurity issues were really relegated to the defense community and they were not viewed as a challenge to the economy.”

On another broadband issue, Cicconi said carriers will have to limit the use of some applications on wireless networks to protect all users. Skype this week released an application giving iPhone users access to its service. Some observers say this will inevitably raise issues at the FCC about how much network operators like AT&T can limit the bandwidth used by smartphones.

“If it is a shared network, and wireless is, then you have to balance the interests and expectations of the customers,” he said. “Those who assert an unfettered right to do anything they want on the network in some cases carry it too far, in the sense that they seem to feel that their individual right should trump the group rights.” What they're saying is, “'if I want to use an application that prevents everybody in a two-square-mile radius from being able to access the Internet I should have the right to do that’ - and I think that’s wrong,” he said. “We don’t allow that in any aspect of society.”

Cicconi added, “That’s the dilemma, and I think there have to be reasonable limitations on the one customer’s right to do things that damage the rights of all other customers on the same service … I'm not speaking to Skype when I say that or any other particular application, but that’s the core dilemma.”

Cicconi also said he expects a study soon of USF under new Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and new House Telecommunications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va. “You have two people who are very attuned to the importance of universal service and the state of the USF,” he said. “The fund is broken and everybody knows it, and intercarrier comp system is hopelessly arcane It’s not rational and it’s probably not sustainable.”

The last FCC fell short of approving an overhaul last year “but got close enough that a new FCC, once it’s constituted, can try to move it forward from there,” he said. Many companies opposed to reform in the past saw their interests compromised by proposals debated last year, Cicconi said. “A lot of those companies are now of a view that they need to get on board with reform and have a voice in it, rather than simply stepping aside and hoping they can be carved out.”

Cicconi said AT&T agrees with Verizon that the 700 MHz D block should be given directly to public safety groups (CD April 2 p1) rather than being offered in another auction. “They tried this approach and it failed totally in far better economic times,” he said of an auction. “I don’t see how anyone can expect that a renewed effort to do this in the current economy will somehow succeed.” Cicconi said the “only significant recommendation of the 9/11 Commission that is as yet unfilled in total” was better interoperable communications for first responders.

“We can’t go through another terrorist attack, or another Katrina-like disaster without such a system in place,” he said. “The government needs to recognize that the public-private partnership approach hasn’t worked and in the current economy, which will be with us a while, it looks like, probably won’t.” By giving the spectrum directly to public safety “you start the process and I think it also tees up the issue for Congress to address in terms of where there are funding shortfalls whether they should help address that,” he said.

On other issues, Cicconi said he would welcome an FCC investigation of whether, as Sprint Nextel and other companies contend, most wireless carriers don’t have adequate access to backhaul and have to pay unfair, discriminatory rates.

The FCC should seek data on where other carriers have facilities and the prices paid, Cicconi said. Sprint has created “an urban legend” about the scarcity of backhaul capacity, he said. “We know there’s a lot more out there than they're claiming,” he said. “But you know what, if we're wrong, we're wrong. The FCC should gather the facts and decide if there’s a problem based on the facts.” Cicconi said only one complaint has ever been filed at the FCC about discriminatory backhaul rates -- by AT&T against BellSouth. “We won it and then of course I had to deal with it after the merger,” he said. Cicconi said regulation isn’t the answer. “If you actually do want more backhaul facilities built, the last way you're going to get them built is to put pricing regulation on it.

Cicconi said he expects Rockefeller to take a keen interest in telecom and Internet matters. “He clearly has interest on the issues,” Cicconi said. “He’s been very engaged on most of the major issues throughout his time on the committee He’s got some incredibly talented staffers to assist him, very bright people. They're politically savvy but also savvy on policy.”