Telecom & Cable Regulation

Toward a Technology “Watchful Waiting” Principle

by on January 17, 2013 · 6 comments

When the smoke cleared and I found myself half caught-up on sleep, the information and sensory overload that was CES 2013 had ended.

There was a kind of split-personality to how I approached the event this year. Monday through Wednesday was spent in conference tracks, most of all the excellent Innovation Policy Summit put together by the Consumer Electronics Association. (Kudos again to Gary Shapiro, Michael Petricone and their team of logistics judo masters.)

The Summit has become an important annual event bringing together legislators, regulators, industry and advocates to help solidify the technology policy agenda for the coming year and, in this case, a new Congress.

I spent Thursday and Friday on the show floor, looking in particular for technologies that satisfy what I coined the The Law of Disruption: social, political, and economic systems change incrementally, but technology changes exponentially.

What I found, as I wrote in a long post-mortem for Forbes, is that such technologies are well-represented at CES, but are mostly found at the edges of the show–literally. Continue reading →

SHARE: 6 comments

Netflix Blocking Internet Access to HD Movies

by on January 17, 2013 · 605 comments

Unfortunately, most consumers won’t realize that Netflix is trying to impose its costs on all Internet consumers to gain an anticompetitive price advantage against its over-the-top competitors.

At the Consumer Electronic Show two weeks ago, Netflix announced that it would block consumer access to high definition and 3D movies (HD) for customers of Internet service providers (ISPs) that Netflix disfavors. Netflix’s goal is to coerce ISPs into paying for a free Internet fast lane for Netflix content. If Netflix succeeds, it would harm Internet consumers and competition among video streaming providers. It would also fundamentally alter the economics and openness of the Internet, “where consumers make their own choices about what applications and services to use and are free to decide what content they want to access, create, or share with others.”

Ironically, Netflix’s strategy is a variant of the doomsday narrative spun by net neutrality activists over the last decade. Their narrative assumes ISPs will use their gatekeeper control to block their customers from accessing Internet content distributed by competitors. Of course, ISPs have never blocked consumer access to competitive Internet content. Now that the FCC has distorted the Internet marketplace through the adoption of asymmetric net neutrality rules, Netflix, the dominant streaming video provider, has decided to block consumer access to its content.

This may not seem like a big deal given the relatively limited HD content currently available on Netflix. But that’s about to change in a very big way. Netflix recently announced a new multi-year licensing agreement that makes it the “exclusive American subscription TV service for first run live-action and animated features from the Walt Disney Studios.” In addition to Disney-branded content (e.g., The Lion King), the deal includes content produced by Pixar (e.g., Brave), Lucasfilm (e.g., Star Wars), and Marvel (e.g., The Avengers). Netflix also announced a multi-year deal with Turner Broadcasting and Warner Bros. that includes the Cartoon Network and exclusive distribution rights to TNT’s television series Dallas. As an analyst recently told Ars Technica, “These movies, if you’ve got young kids—you’ve got to have Netflix.”

Netflix has decided to use this new market power to force ISPs to pay for its own Internet fast lane. In classic double-speak, Netflix calls its fast lane the “Netflix Open Connect” content delivery network (CDN). Though Netflix uses the word “open” to describe its CDN, it is not part of the open Internet. It is only “open” to Netflix for the delivery of its content, and it is only “open” to ISPs who connect to it on terms dictated by Netflix. Continue reading →

SHARE: 605 comments

Crawford’s Misplaced Nostalgia for Utility Regulation

by on January 10, 2013 · 0 comments

In her new book, Captive Audience, Susan Crawford makes the same argument that the lawyers for AT&T made in Judge Harold H. Greene’s courtroom in response to the government’s antitrust complaint beginning in 1981, i.e., that telephone service was a “natural monopoly.”  In those days, AT&T wanted regulation and hated competition, which is the same as Crawford’s perspective with respect to broadband now.  Here is what she said today on the Diane Rehm Show:

Diane Rehm: “Is regulation the next step?”

Susan Crawford: “It always has been for these industries, because it really doesn’t make sense to have more than one wire into our homes.  It is a very expensive thing to install; once it’s there, it has to be kept up to the highest level of maintenance, it has to allow for lots of competition at the retail level—across this wholesale facility—and it has to be available to consumers at reasonable cost.  That kind of result isn’t produced by the marketplace; it doesn’t happen by magic, because … when you can divide markets, and cooperate, you’re not going to come up with the best solution for consumers.

In her book, Crawford candidly says that “America needs to move to a utility model” for broadband … and “stop treating this commodity as if it were a first-run art film…”

It’s time for a stroll down memory lane.

Continue reading →

SHARE: 0 comments

Tears for Tiers: Wyden’s “Data Cap” Restrictions Would Hurt, not Help, Internet Users

by on December 20, 2012 · 609 comments

By Geoffrey Manne & Berin Szoka

As Democrats insist that income taxes on the 1% must go up in the name of fairness, one Democratic Senator wants to make sure that the 1% of heaviest Internet users pay the same price as the rest of us. It’s ironic how confused social justice gets when the Internet’s involved.

Senator Ron Wyden is beloved by defenders of Internet freedom, most notably for blocking the Protect IP bill—sister to the more infamous SOPA—in the Senate. He’s widely celebrated as one of the most tech-savvy members of Congress. But his latest bill, the “Data Cap Integrity Act,” is a bizarre, reverse-Robin Hood form of price control for broadband. It should offend those who defend Internet freedom just as much as SOPA did.

Wyden worries that “data caps” will discourage Internet use and allow “Internet providers to extract monopoly rents,” quoting a New York Times editorial from July that stirred up a tempest in a teapot. But his fears are straw men, based on four false premises.

First, US ISPs aren’t “capping” anyone’s broadband; they’re experimenting with usage-based pricing—service tiers. If you want more than the basic tier, your usage isn’t capped: you can always pay more for more bandwidth. But few users will actually exceed that basic tier. For example, Comcast’s basic tier, 300 GB/month, is so generous that 98.5% of users will not exceed it. That’s enough for 130 hours of HD video each month (two full-length movies a day) or between 300 and 1000 hours of standard (compressed) video streaming.

Second, Wyden sets up a false dichotomy: Caps (or tiers, more accurately) are, according to Wyden, “appropriate if they are carefully constructed to manage network congestion,” but apparently for Wyden the only alternative explanation for usage-based pricing is extraction of monopoly rents. This simply isn’t the case, and propagating that fallacy risks chilling investment in network infrastructure. In fact, usage-based pricing allows networks to charge heavy users more, thereby recovering more costs and actually reducing prices for the majority of us who don’t need more bandwidth than the basic tier permits—and whose usage is effectively subsidized by those few who do. Unfortunately, Wyden’s bill wouldn’t allow pricing structures based on cost recovery—only network congestion. So, for example, an ISP might be allowed to price usage during times of peak congestion, but couldn’t simply offer a lower price for the basic tier to light users.

That’s nuts—from the perspective of social justice as well as basic economic rationality. Even as the FCC was issuing its famous Net Neutrality regulations, the agency rejected proposals to ban usage-based pricing, explaining:

prohibiting tiered or usage-based pricing and requiring all subscribers to pay the same amount for broadband service, regardless of the performance or usage of the service, would force lighter end users of the network to subsidize heavier end users. It would also foreclose practices that may appropriately align incentives to encourage efficient use of networks.

It is unclear why Senator Wyden thinks the FCC—no friend of broadband “monopolists”—has this wrong. Continue reading →

SHARE: 609 comments

FCC Should State the Obvious: Telephone Service Is Not a Monopoly

by on December 19, 2012 · 0 comments

Given the rate at which telephone companies are losing customers when they cannot raise prices as a regulatory matter, it is preposterous to continue presuming that they could raise prices as an economic matter.

Today, the United States Telecom Association (USTA) asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to declare that incumbent telephone companies are no longer monopolies. Ten years ago, when most households had “plain old telephone service,” this request would have seemed preposterous. Today, when only one in three homes have a phone line, it is merely stating the obvious: Switched telephone service has no market power at all. Continue reading →

SHARE: 0 comments

Ending Transaction ‘Mission Creep’ at the FCC

by on December 14, 2012 · 2 comments

by Larry Downes and Geoffrey A. Manne

Now that the election is over, the Federal Communications Commission is returning to the important but painfully slow business of updating its spectrum management policies for the 21st century. That includes a process the agency started in September to formalize its dangerously unstructured role in reviewing mergers and other large transactions in the communications industry.

This followed growing concern about “mission creep” at the FCC, which, in deals such as those between Comcast and NBCUniversal, AT&T and T-Mobile USA, and Verizon Wireless and SpectrumCo, has repeatedly been caught with its thumb on the scales of what is supposed to be a balance between private markets and what the Communications Act refers to as the “public interest.” Continue reading →

SHARE: 2 comments

Don’t Let the Doublespeak Fool You: When CLECs Say “Packet Mode,” They Mean “Regulate the Internet”

by on December 10, 2012 · 7 comments

When CLECs say “packet mode,” don’t let the doublespeak fool you. They are asking for heavy-handed economic regulation of the Internet itself, just like many countries at the ITU.

Last week, I wrote about the failure of the CLECs to provide consumers with the additional choices in communications services Congress had envisioned in 1996. I noted that, now that the antiquated telephone network is about to sunset, CLECs must bear responsibility for their own decisions to forgo investment in their own infrastructure and rely on lines leased with temporary government subsidies. The desperation of CLECs to avoid this reality is apparent in their use of doublespeak to conceal their true intent: convincing the FCC to regulate the Internet like plain old telephone service. Continue reading →

SHARE: 7 comments

Don’t Let CLECs Throw Consumers Under the Internet Bus

by on December 7, 2012 · 3 comments

Rather than invest and deploy new networks offering millions of consumers with additional choices for high speed Internet access, CLECs are investing in the regulatory process in hopes the FCC will save them from the inconvenience and expense of transitioning to all-IP infrastructure. The FCC should not allow the self-interest of CLECs to stand in the way of the IP-transition or the delivery of high speed Internet services to millions of residential consumers who demand more choice.

Shortly after AT&T announced “Project Velocity IP,” its plan to invest an additional $14 billion to provide high-speed Internet access to 99 percent of customer locations in its wireline service area, I blogged about the broad consensus among policymakers, pundits, and industry players in support of the announcement. But, “you can never please all of the people all of the time.” Now that the initial buzz around the announcement has abated, the inevitably unpleased few have gone on the offensive.

The few who cannot be pleased by Internet transformation are “competitive local exchange carriers,” also known as “CLECs.” These companies were created in the mid-1990s to provide both residential and business consumers with an additional choice for telephone service, but after the dot-com bubble burst, CLECs chose to limit their offerings to more lucrative business customers in downtown metro areas. They typically do not offer service to residential consumers or businesses that demand additional options in more suburban and rural areas.

While companies that serve all types of American consumers are investing in the transformation of their outdated telephone systems into the all-Internet protocol (IP) infrastructure of the 21st Century to deliver high-speed Internet services to residential consumers, CLECs claim the IP-transition is a “waste of resources” and a “distraction.” Rather than invest and deploy new networks offering millions of consumers with additional choices for high speed Internet access, CLECs are investing in the regulatory process in hopes the FCC will save them from the inconvenience and expense of transitioning to all-IP infrastructure. The FCC should not allow the self-interest of CLECs to stand in the way of the IP-transition or the delivery of high-speed Internet services to millions of residential consumers who demand more choice. Continue reading →

SHARE: 3 comments

Latest WCIT Leak Makes Explicit Russian Desire to Overturn ICANN

by on November 18, 2012 · 14 comments

On Friday evening, I posted on CNET a detailed analysis of the most recent proposal to surface from the secretive upcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications, WCIT 12.  The conference will discuss updates to a 1988 UN treaty administered by the International Telecommunications Union, and throughout the year there have been reports that both governmental and non-governmental members of the ITU have been trying to use the rewrite to put the ITU squarely in the Internet business.

The Russian federation’s proposal, which was submitted to the ITU on Nov. 13th, would explicitly bring “IP-based Networks” under the auspices of the ITU, and would in specific substantially if not completely change the role of ICANN in overseeing domain names and IP addresses.

According to the proposal, “Member States shall have the sovereign right to manage the Internet within their national territory, as well as to manage national Internet domain names.”  And a second revision, also aimed straight at the heart of today’s multi-stakeholder process, reads:  “Member States shall have equal rights in the international allocation of Internet addressing and identification resources.” Continue reading →

SHARE: 14 comments

Roosevelt Tried To Abolish the FCC

by on November 2, 2012 · 4 comments

No doubt you are aware that the Communications Act of 1934 eastablished the Federal Communications Commission, which has profoundly affected the broadcast, cable, telecommunications and satellite industries.  You will recall that the legislation was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  What you may not realize is that President Roosevelt made two subsequent attempts to abolish the Federal Communications Commission.

On Jan. 23, 1939, Roosevelt wrote similar letters to Senator Burton K. Wheeler and Congressman Clarence F. Lea urging dramatic FCC reform.

I am thoroughly dissatisfied  with the present legal framework and administrative machinery of the [Federal Communications] Commission.  I have come to the definite conclusion that new legislation is necessary to effectuate a satisfactory reorganization of the Commission.

New legislation is also needed to lay down clear Congressional policies on the substantive side – so clear that the new administrative body will have no difficulty in interpreting or administering them.

I very much hope that your committee will consider the advisability of such new legislation.

Although proposals for FCC reorginization were introduced at the time, Congress did not act.  Then World War II intervened.  It wasn’t until 1996 that Congress “comprehensively” updated the 1934 Act.  But the 104th Congress left the “present legal framework and administrative machinery of the Commission” intact, and it failed to to “lay down clear Congressional policies on the substantive side.”

Roosevelt wanted to transfer the functions of all independent agencies like the FCC to cabinet departments.  A 1937 initiative for this purpose failed.  Two years later, Roosevelt took aim at the FCC directly.

Roosevelt’s specific issues with the FCC of the 1930s are a subject for a subsequent essay (they were primarily on the radio side, although also relevant to the telephone side).  In any event, his 1939 letter reinforces a libertarian critique of the 1934 act.  The law was overly broad and created too much room for the FCC to establish its own  policy preferences instead of serving to enforce the policies of elected congressional representatives and the president.

Althouth well-intentioned, the FCC (even to its most famous creator) was a disapointment and a mistake.  The 113th Congress should carefully consider the 32nd president’s advice.

SHARE: 4 comments

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →