Net neutrality being such a hot issue right now, we haven’t had a chance lately to agree with our friends at Public Knowledge. But when we do agree, we really agree. (Speaking for myself, that includes orphan works and fair use.) Today PK President Gigi Sohn blogs about the XM-Sirius merger and opposition to it by the NAB. The post is too good to excerpt only a piece, so here it is in its entirety–under a Creative Commons license, of course.
How is it that the National Association of Broadcasters, which is seeking regulatory relief from current media ownership caps, has the gumption to criticize the proposed merger of XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio? Their statement following the announced merger can be found here, but this is the part I like best:
When the FCC authorized satellite radio, it specifically found that the public would be served best by two competitive nationwide systems. Now, with their stock price at rock bottom and their business model in disarray…they seek a government bail-out to avoid competing in the marketplace.
If any industry knows how to “seek a government bail-out to avoid competing in the marketplace,” it is the broadcast industry. What is “must carry,” other than a government-granted cable-carriage easement for broadcasters? What is exclusive, free licensing of spectrum, other than government-granted protection from auctions and unlicensed uses of the public airwaves?
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Yesterday I explained that in my view first responders don’t need more spectrum to address their interoperability problem, but instead a different approach to using the spectrum they already have. So if Congress shouldn’t allocate more spectrum for public safety, what should it do to address the problem?
Cyren Call is absolutely right about a lot of things: That we should opt for national networks, rather than 50,000 individual and incompatible radio systems for each locality or agency. That everyone benefits when public safety spectrum is shared with commercial users (as long as first responders have priority). That given the opportunity, the private sector will build public safety networks that first responders can subscribe to. Where Cyren Call goes wrong is in insisting that we need new spectrum to achieve this.
What Congress can do is very simple. Open up spectrum already allocated for public safety and allow private companies to build networks on that spectrum. Allow the FCC to assign spectrum allocated for public safety to commercial carriers (like Verizon or Cyren Call or whoever) directly. Require in the licenses1 that the carrier build a network up to public safety specs. Allow the carriers to sell excess capacity to commercial users, but ensure that first responders have priority. Voila, commercial provision of public safety communications. Don’t want to stop there? There’s more Congress can do.
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Ahead of tomorrow’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing on public safety communications, the Consumer Electronics Association released a report (PDF) it commissioned from Criterion Economics analyzing the Cyren Call plan. The report concludes that the Cyren Call plan would upturn Congress’s carefully crafted DTV transition scheme. It also calls into question whether the private sector would build a more expensive broadband network than it would otherwise have to in order to meet the more rigorous needs of public safety.
Like I said, the study was commissioned by a special interest and it should be read in that light. (And by all means, read it yourself and make up your own mind.) However, the study does outline some basic facts that support something I’ve been saying for a long time: public safety communications does not need more spectrum, what it needs is spectrum reform. Here’s a sampling from the report:
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Time for a quick reality check. The Federal Communications Commission regulates older media sectors and communications technologies: broadcast radio, broadcast TV, telephones, satellites, etc. These sectors and technologies are growing increasingly competitive and face myriad new, unregulated rivals. What, then, is wrong with this picture?
Seriously, I just don’t get it. Why does the FCC’s budget keep growing without constraint? Why does it need $313 million and nearly 2,000 bureaucrats to regulate industries and technologies that could do just fine, thank you very much, without endless meddling from DC. It seems to me like all those unregulated rivals are doing just fine without the FCC serving as market nanny, so why not cut the flow of funds to the FCC for awhile and see what happens?
This agency needs to be put on a serious diet. There’s just no excuse for this level of spending in an era when the market is growing more competitive. Check out the entire FCC 2008 budget here if you are interested in their profligate spending habits.
(And just imagine how much more the agency will be spending once Net neutrality regulations get on the books!)
I’ve written on this blog before about Cyren Call, Nextel founder Morgan O’Brien’s venture to create a national wireless broadband network for first responders. Its plan calls for 30 MHz of spectrum in the 700 MHz band that are slated for auction. A couple of months ago the FCC turned down Cyren Call’s petition, saying Congress’s instructions were quite clear and the Commission didn’t have the authority to refuse to auction the spectrum. Morgan O’Brien spoke at the symposium we held late last year and hinted that he was already working on getting Congress to approve his plan. (Video here.)
Well, today comes word that John McCain has signed on to the Cyren Call plan. This is especially newsworthy since the Senate will soon take a look at the recently passed House bill to implement the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations. As I explained earlier today, that bill addresses first responder communications, but doesn’t mention new spectrum for public safety. McCain said he plans to introduce legislation in the near future to assign the 30 MHz to the Public Safety Broadband Trust the Cyren Call plan calls for. I’m not convinced you need 30 MHz of spectrum to create a viable network, and so I’m not sure it’s time to remove spectrum from efficient allocation by auctions. Verizon hinted a while back that they could do it in just 12 MHz of the 24 already slated for public safety, and the FCC is currently taking comments in a proceeding to create just such a network in 12 MHz. Comments are due on Feb. 26. Note to Verizon: Now would be a fine time to make details of your plan public.
The other problem I see is that the Cyren Call/McCain plan would create one monopoly provider. The FCC plan has the same problem. If it can be done in 12 MHz, why not create two competing networks in the 24 MHz of spectrum already allocated for public safety?
Implementing the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations was the House Democrat’s top priority during their recent “first 100 hours” legislative spree. One of the recommendations addressed in the resulting H.R. 1 bill had to do with public safety communications interoperability. The 9/11 Commission found that communications between firefighters, police officers, and other emergency personnel failed that day with deadly consequences. Here is a quick analysis of H.R. 1’s interoperability provisions, as well as the Commission’s recommendation itself, in which I argue that they are both overlooking the fundamental causes of the interoperability problem.
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WASHINGTON, January 23, 2007–Those who would “Save the Internet” came to Memphis last week and declared victory in their struggle. They also hosted a party to celebrate and launch the next phase of the battle: going on the offensive.
The SavetheInternet.com Coalition is, of course, David to the Bell companies’ Goliath. Over the last two years AT&T, Verizon Communications and their trade group the United States Telecom Association spent more than $50 million lobbying Congress to change the nation’s telecommunications laws, according to disclosure documents. But it was spent in vain. The Bell-favored bill, which had overwhelmingly passed the House, died last year in the Senate.
In contrast, SavetheInternet.com spent $250,000 on educating the public about its side of the story, said coalition spokesman Craig Aaron. “Save the Internet” opposed the Bell bill, and made “Net Neutrality” its rallying cry. The coalition gathered more than 1.5 million petition signatures supporting the notion that telecom companies must be stopped from controlling the content that flows over their broadband networks
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MEMPHIS, Tenn., January 13, 2007–A new House subcommittee chaired by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, will turn its oversight to a range of government agencies, particularly the Federal Communications Commission, Kucinich announced here on Friday night.
Kucinich, a 2004 candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination who stated his intention to run again in 2008, said that his committee will hold holdings criticizing the FCC on the issue of media ownership.
In a speech before the National Conference for Media Reform here, unexpected visitor Kucinich announced his chairmanship of the Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the House Government Reform Committee.
The new subcommittee, Kucinich said in the speech, would be a platform to hold “hearings to push media reform right at the center of Washington.”
“You are the message,” he said to the cheering crowd.
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WASHINGTON, January 8, 2007–Both the high-tech and the mainstream press go ga-ga over the Consumer Electronics Show. Forty years old, it’s the country’s largest annual trade show, and it officially opens this morning in Las Vegas.
What’s not to like in more than 1.2 million square feet of electronic glitz and glimmer? On Sunday night, Microsoft’s Bill Gates previewed how your car will communicate with your electronic address book and your digital music player. Verizon Wireless demonstrated how you will soon get television from Comedy Central, Fox, and NBC directly on your cell phone. And NetGear announced a “media receiver” for watching TV, movies and Internet videos from the comfort of your leather couch. Think of it as video iPod with an HDTV connection.
The impresario of all these digital goodies is Gary Shapiro, the chief lobbyist for the Consumer Electronics Association. CEA is the tech trade association that sponsors the annual event, raking in more than $80 million. But for Shapiro, who looks and acts like the proverbial kid in the candy shop for four days every January, the show is about more than just money. It’s about scoring points for his group’s public policy agenda in Washington.
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The blogosphere was abuzz last week with discussion about Brink Lindsey’s essay about “liberaltarianism”–the idea of a fusionist alliance between libertarians and liberals, modeled after the conservative-libertarian alliance that brought you Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. Julian has a good roundup here. And see Ezra Klein, Julian Sanchez, myself, Matt Yglesias, Ramesh Ponuru, Will Wilkinson, and Todd Zywicki.
It seems to me that this blog is in some ways a good example of the potential for left-libertarian solidarity. Much of what we talk about on this blog is at least as congenial to the left as it is to the right. We’ve got Adam attacking the FCC for bowing to the whims of the Parents’ Television Council and criticizing Congress for restricting online gambling. We’ve got Jim Harper attacking the national ID card and mocking elected officials for hysteria over terrorism. We’ve got me criticizing the NSA for its illegal surveillance programs (and blasting the GOP Congress for whitewashing it) and states for using insecure voting machines.
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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.