After weeks of intense lobbying, the FCC today set rules for the auction of former UHF TV channels 60-69 (in the prime 700 MHz range of frequencies). The full details are not yet out, but the decision seems to be largely what was expected: a “public-private partnership” for newly-allocated public safety spectrum, and — for commercial spectrum — new regulations that impose “open access” rules on 22 megahertz of the allocated frequencies.
No one was completely satisfied. Google and other wireless net neutrality proponents notably failed in their bid for more expansive regulation — with the Commission rejecting their calls for mandated interconnection and wholesale leasing of spectrum.
This loss — in part — may be due to a tactical fumble by Google itself. Its pledge last week to bid a minimun of $4.6 billion if the Commission adopted four proposed rules for these frequencies was perceived (rightly or wrongly) as an ultimatum to the FCC. Had the Commission then adopted the Google’s proposed rules, the agency’s own credibility and independence would have been put at risk.
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The rag-tag army myth has made its return — this time in a front-page story in the Washington Post. In case you don’t remember, I wrote several times last year (here, here, and here) on the persistent myth that advocates of net neutrality were an outnumbered and outgunned “‘rag-tag” army fighting against the odds. The idea of course, is preposterous — the firms supporting neutrality regulation are among the largest on Earth.
Preposterous or not, the Washington Post picked up the theme today in a piece on the FCC’s 700 Mhz auction, writing that “Google’s 12-person Washington team, based in temporary quarters on Pennsylvania Avenue, has aggressively confronted the legions of lobbyists behind the two telecom behemoths [Verizon and AT&T].
One can just imagine the poor, outnumbered Googleers fighting off endless hordes of telecom company lobbyists. Things are looking desperate, they take stock of their resources and find they are down to their last… $160 billion.
That’s right, Google’s market capitalization tops $160 billion. That’s larger than Verizon (though less than AT&T). By any meaure, Google is one of the largest corporations on earth. While perhaps new to the Washington policy world, it’s hardly outgunned in terms of resources. This is a company that pledged last week to bid $4.6 billion for spectrum if the FCC adopted the regulations it wanted. As Everett Dirksen might have said, $4.6 billion here and $4.6 million there and pretty soon you are talking about real money.
Don’t get me wrong — Google has every right to its wealth, it earned it. And I have nothing against their DC team, who all seem like nice fellows. But can we please call a halt to this game of “who’s the underdog?” These guys are big cats, and underdog’s cape would just look silly on them.
Last week, Jerry Ellig and I filed a reply commment (PDF) in the FCC’s ongoing broadband competition proceeding. In it we examined the evidence put forth during the comment period. Today we summarize our findings in an op-ed in TCS Daily:
The Federal Communications Commission recently asked for evidence that broadband Internet companies currently engage in data discrimination that would justify regulation of the Internet. …
… the Commission explicitly asked commenters to “provide specific, verifiable examples with supporting documentation, and [to] limit their comments to those practices that are technically feasible today.” Close to 10,000 comments were submitted to the FCC, yet all but 143 were what the FCC calls “brief text comments,” many of which were form letters generated at the behest of advocacy groups.
Of the 143 more extensive comments, only 66 are longer than two pages, and of these only 20 advocate some form of new regulation. None of these 20 offers any significant empirical evidence to suggest that there currently exists a “market failure” or other systemic problem justifying regulatory intervention in the name of net neutrality.
The WSJ has an article by the FCC’s Robert M. McDowell on July 24, 2007, p. A15, “Broadband Baloney,” critiquing among other things the OECD’s discouraging data on broadband in the United States:
American consumers are poised to reap a windfall of benefits from a new wave of broadband deployment. But you would never know it by the rhetoric of those who would have us believe that the nation is falling behind, indeed in free fall.
Looming over the horizon are heavy-handed government mandates setting arbitrary standards, speeds and build-out requirements that could favor some technologies over others, raise prices and degrade service. This would be a mistaken road to take — although it would hardly be the first time in history that alarmists have ignored cold, hard facts in pursuit of bad policy.
Tyler Cowan has further remarks on the topic, with comments.
The MPAA comments in the FCC’s Net Neutrality proceeding cautions against taking steps that would interfere with the deployment of watermarking, filtering, deep packet inspection, and so on. What’s the connection exactly? Part of it is unknown–since the technologies are new, and are just being deployed. Part of it is known… much of the dispute about technologies being deployed to protect content (not just in the sense of protecting copyrighted content, but in the sense of security generally) is about who will pay for it. The content creator? The network infrastructure engineers? The developers of software used in distribution? The retailer? The CPE manufacturer? Insofar as net neutrality principles end up constraining who may charge whom for what, they may preclude otherwise desirable arrangements of who bears the costs. And insofar as net neutrality constrains one player on the net from blocking or interfering with another, it may hamper efforts to control piracy like spam, by impeding traffic carried by or through disreputable ports of call.
By Drew Clark
The National Association of Broadcasters likes to think of itself as the king of Capitol Hill. It carefully cultivates an invincible image. And some in the mainstream media buy it. The New York Times describes NAB as “the powerful trade lobby.” But in truth, right now television and radio broadcasters have never been weaker than in 1982, when Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., uttered these famous words: “The NAB can’t lobby its way out of a paper bag.”
Over the last 10 years, the NAB spent $55 million in lobbying expenditures – more than any other association – to disprove Packwood’s hypothesis. But still, the association is now getting hit on all sides. On radio, this year NAB is battling the proposed merger of XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio. Besting such a merger would normally be easy – if NAB hadn’t been arguing for the opposite of what it now seeks. And last month an alliance of performers and recording companies called MusicFirst decided to strike for a performance royalty from over-the-air radio stations. American copyright law exempts terrestrial broadcasters from paying for performances.
But the biggest deal is now heading into the spotlight: vacant television channels known as “white spaces.” Everyone covets them: technology companies like Dell, Google, Intel and Microsoft, wireless carriers like Sprint-Nextel, advocates for rural broadband, and non-profit spectrum utopians who look at white spaces and see decentralized community networks.
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Today, the
Well Connected Project
of the Center for Public Integrity is excited to launch an issue portal jointly with
Congresspedia
. This issue portal is a wiki, like
Wikipedia
, creating a collection of articles on
telecom, media and technology policy
, in a single location. Anyone can read, write and edit these articles.
This issue portal builds on the great telecom and technology reporting done by the members of the Well Connected Project staff. This venture into collaborative journalism is a first for our project. It adds a new element to our investigative journalism endeavor. First of all, we have the
Media Tracker
, a free database of more than five million records that tells you who owns the media where you live by typing in you ZIP code. If we win our
lawsuit against the FCC
, we’ll also include company-specific broadband information in the Media Tracker.
Second,
our blog
features dozens of quick-turnaround stories on the hottest topics in telecom and media policy. Recent stories have broken news on the battle over 700 Megahertz, on the lobbying over the proposed XM-Sirius satellite radio merger, and also over copyright controls on electronic devices. We also do investigative reports – like this one about
Sam Zell
, the new owner of Tribune Co. – that build on the data that is freely available in Media Tracker.
Now, with the addition of this Congresspedia wiki, our project aims to incorporate citizen-journalism on key public policy issues near and dear to the blogosphere. These are issues like
Broadband availability
,
Digital copyright
,
Digital television
,
Regulating media content
, and
Spectrum
are at the core of what techies care about in Washington. We hope you will add others articles, too. In fact, I’ve already started my own wish list: articles about Patent overhaul legislation, Media ownership, the Universal Service Fund, and Video franchising. Our reporters can summarize these issues and debates, but so can you.
Take a crack at them!
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Google wants the Federal Communications Commisison to make net neutrality a licensing requirement in the Upper 700 MHz spectrum band – “(1) open applications, (2) open devices, (3) open services, and (4) open access.” According to media reports, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is circulating draft rules which would impose such a requirement (see: this, this and this).
What’s Martin’s agenda? I suspect he thinks he’s come up with a brilliant strategic maneuver – give Google the chance to acquire a nationwide broadband wireless footprint on the cheap and maybe the company will give up funding the advocates of net neutrality regulation. AOL ended its support for open access the minute it merged with Time Warner, didn’t it?
But as we learned from the 1996 Telecommunications Act, procompetition policy is tricky and unpredictable. That debacle proved Thomas Sowell’s observation that a self-equilibrating system like the market economy means a reduced role for intellectuals and politicians. Unfortunately, as Sowell added in an interview with Jason Riley, “even today many still haven’t accepted that their superior wisdom might be superfluous, if not damaging.” Nowhere is this more true than in communications policy.
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WASHINGTON, July 3, 2007 – The Federal Trade Commission intends to monitor the information that telecom and cable companies provide about high-speed Internet service in the service plans they offer to customers, according to a report issued last week by the agency.
The FTC asserts in the report, released on June 27, that since it has jurisdiction over matters involving consumer protection, it “will continue to enforce the consumer protection laws in the area of broadband access.”
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The Federal Trade Commission is “unaware of any significant market failure or demonstrated consumer harm from conduct by broadband providers,” according to a Staff Report on Broadband Connectivity Competition Policy, which advises:
Policy makers should be wary of enacting regulation solely to prevent prospective harm to consumer welfare, particularly given the indeterminate effects on such welfare of potential conduct by broadband providers and the law enforcement structures that already exist.
The report indicates FTC staff believes it is “impossible to determine in the abstract” whether allowing content and applications providers (or even end users) to pay broadband providers for prioritized data transmission will be beneficial or harmful to consumer welfare. Similarly, staff feels broadband providers have “conflicting incentives” relating to blockage and discrimination against data from non-affiliated providers and that, in the abstract, “it is impossible to know which of these incentives would prove stronger for each broadband provider.”
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The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.