Formal net neutrality rules could stifle business deals that could change how the Internet is used, a former FCC chief economist told Wednesday’s Internet Video Policy Symposium. Google’s search engine and Apple’s iPhone in particular owe their ascendancy -- and pressure on rivals to improve products and services -- to regulators’ hands-off approach, said Tom Hazlett, director of the Information Economy Project at George Mason University. Panelists agreed that providers’ network management practices should be transparent, not kept secret, as Comcast did with its BitTorrent traffic-shaping policies.
Adam Bender
Adam Bender, Deputy Managing Editor for Privacy Daily. Bender leads a team of journalists and reports on state privacy legislation, rulemaking and litigation. In previous roles at Communications Daily, he covered telecom and internet policy in the states, Congress and at the FCC. He has won awards for his reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), Specialized Information Publishers Association (SIPA) and the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (SABEW). Bender studied print journalism at American University and is the author of multiple dystopian sci-fi novels. Keep up to date with Bender by reading his blog and following him on social media including Bluesky, Mastodon and LinkedIn.
The FCC would need to exercise tough enforcement on manufacturers if the commission chooses to promote unlicensed spectrum deployment, Association for Maximum Service TV President David Donovan told a Federal Communications Bar Association lunch Tuesday. Spectrum efficiency will depend on the devices, he said. Without enforcement, manufacturers could ignore interference concerns as they try to outdo rivals with more powerful devices, he said. Manufacturers must have incentive to build non-interfering devices for unlicensed spectrum, agreed WilmerHale lawyer Jonathan Neuchterlein. But enforcement could prove tricky, Donovan said. “The entity you hold responsible may not even be within our shores.”
USTelecom debuted a Web site on broadband policy and proclaiming the group “The Broadband Association.” The public shift from voice to broadband is simply “calling it what it is,” USTelecom President Walter McCormick said in an interview. “The future of communications is in broadband,” he said. The phrase “Broadband Association” helps identify USTelecom’s membership and reflects changes in the kinds of companies coming to trade shows and working on policy, he said. USTelecom recently recruited Japan broadband giant NTT as a member. And the entertainment industry is taking an increasing part at USTelecom conferences, McCormick said.
The proportion of long distance revenue carriers must contribute to the Universal Service Fund in the second quarter of 2008 increased to 11.3 percent from 10.2 percent in Q1, the FCC said Friday. To get the “contribution factor,” the agency divides projected carrier revenue by expected USF subsidies for the quarter. Of an estimated $1.91 billion in Q2 subsidies, about $1.15 billion is for the rural high-cost program, $532.53 million for the E-rate program, $208.08 million for low-income support and $61.18 million for the rural health-care program. Rural wireless carriers are to blame for the “hike” in phone bill USF fees, said Tom Tauke, Verizon public affairs, policy and communications vice president. He urged the FCC to vote for an interim cap. “Consumers will thank the FCC when three commissioners finally call a halt to funding windfalls for some companies from the Universal Service Fund,” he said. A wireless source shot back: “If you really want to do something about controlling fund growth, then a good place to look would be to change the rules that allow the incumbent’s support to grow even after the incumbent wireline carrier loses customers.”
Telecom groups and companies are sounding alarms on broadband data collection proposals as FCC commissioners prepare to vote next week on the subject. Meanwhile, industry sources expect little opposition to a wireline item extending a ban on exclusive contracts with apartment buildings, they said. The FCC agenda for next week’s meeting was released late Wednesday.
The FCC “doesn’t know how to regulate packet networks” caught up in the net neutrality debate, “and in fact nobody does,” Silicon Valley network architect Richard Bennett said at an Information Technology and Innovation Foundation forum Wednesday. The FCC “knows how to regulate telecom networks,” but should refrain “from getting too nuts” making rules hampering engineers’ efforts against IP network congestion, he said.
Adoption of net neutrality rules is “eminently doable” despite challenges, and the FCC should act soon, Commissioner Michael Copps said in a VON TV webcast Tuesday. After Copps spoke, officials of Free Press, Progress & Freedom Foundation and other groups debated the need for such regulation.
The FCC should adopt procedural rules for forbearance to get more competition data in less time, said comments on a CLEC petition to adopt rules for forbearance procedures. NCTA, EarthLink and state regulators supported tightening controls on petitioners to relieve a time crunch for replies. But the FCC should also require competitors to be timely, said Alaska incumbent ACS. Meanwhile, the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance (ITTA) warned against adopting “redundant or superfluous” rules that could undermine deregulation.
The universal service high-cost fund will “spiral completely out of control” if the FCC grants a Hawaiian Telecom waiver petition, the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association said in reply comments. The carrier disagreed, saying “special circumstances” justify its exemption from usual measurement methods used to set a non- rural local incumbent carrier’s USF support. Even if USF measurement methods need an overhaul, opponents said, it should come in three proposed rulemakings now before the FCC.
A federal court declared it “unlawful” for Nebraska to force Vonage to pay into a state universal service fund. The U.S. District Court for Nebraska slammed the Nebraska PSC with a preliminary injunction, saying the PSC’s “authority to regulate the nomadic interconnected VoIP service provided by [Vonage] is preempted by the FCC, and Vonage need not comply with the [Nebraska USF order].” The order applies only to Nebraska, but will “send a signal” to other states, said Stifel Nicolaus analyst David Kaut.