WASHINGTON, July 17 – Communications Workers of America this past week teamed up with a group of telecommunications companies, cable operators and non-profit groups to push for Congress to pass broadband data legislation.
In a Friday letter and a Monday press release, the groups wrote “to express [their] strong support for Congressional action to promote greater availability and adoption of broadband high-speed Internet services.”
They want “a national policy” to encourage more broadband deployment, and they cite economic statistics about broadband’s potential.
And, as a first step, these companies and CWA want Congress to pass the Broadband Census of America Act, H.R. 3919, or the Broadband Data Improvement Act, S. 1492.
Curiously, last month another large coalition announced a similar campaign. They call themselves Internet for Everyone.
Continue reading “CWA Wants Better Broadband Data, As Does Internet for Everyone“
The following commentary appears in the current issue of Opastco Advocate, a monthly newsletter published by the Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies. Reprinted by permission.
Most Americans who have high-speed Internet can’t imagine life without broadband. How could you connect to the Internet of today without it? In today’s world, broadband is as basic as running water and electricity. And yet the U.S. is falling behind globally. As a technology reporter, I’ve been writing about the battles over broadband and the Internet for nearly a decade in Washington. Yet there is one fact about which nearly everyone seems to be in agreement: if America wants better broadband, America needs better broadband data.
That’s why I’ve recently started a new venture to collect this broadband data, and to make this data freely available for all on the Web, at http://BroadbandCensus.com.
The information and news that is available for free at BroadbandCensus.com is more important now than ever before. The FCC has just made important changes to how it will collect data from carriers. The agency may make even more significant changes in the near future. Public and private sector groups of all stripes are demanding, ever more loudly, that government take steps toward a national broadband policy. That cannot be done without solid information about broadband. Finally, many large carriers are beginning to implement plans to meter out bandwidth in tiers and with usage caps. This marketplace development makes the mission of an independent monitoring Website like BroadbandCensus.com even more critical.
Continue reading →
Jeff Eisenach, Chairman of Criterion Economics, and I have just released a new article about the perils of a la carte regulation in the Federalist Society’s journal Engage. In “A La Carte Regulation of Pay TV: Good Intentions vs. Good Economics,” we argue that: “From a policy perspective, a la carte regulation is worse than a solution in search of a problem; it is a problem waiting to happen.” We show that the pay TV marketplace is functioning quite efficiently and that consumers have more choices and content diversity at their disposal than ever. A la carte mandates, we argue, would destroy that diversity and likely put pressure on prices to go up, contrary to the goals of the backers of a la carte.
We also discuss how a la carte is being proposed a tool of social regulation / speech control, with backers labeling it a way of “cleaning up cable.” We explain why that is not going to work and why, even if it did, it would be a betrayal of the First Amendment.
This new article can be found online here.
WASHINGTON, July 2 – Broadband growth in the United States has effectively stalled over the past five months, a possible victim of the economic slowdown, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
Some 55 percent of all adult Americans now have a high-speed internet connection, or a broadband connection, in their home, according to the report, “Home Broadband Adoption 2008.”
That number compares with 47 percent of adult Americans with broadband in early 2007, and 54 percent in December 2007. Hence broadband growth over the previous 12 or 13 months has dramatically tapered off.
The growth rate in broadband adoption from 2007 to 2008 was 17 percent. That compares favorably to the 12 percent growth recorded in the 2006 to 2007 timeframe, according to Pew’s annual studies in 2007 and 2008.
Continue reading →
When I saw the announcement of Google’s “Internet for Everyone” campaign on their Public Policy Blog, I have to admit, my BS detector started to rise.
“Ubiquitous and open broadband access for every American [should be] a priority in the next administration,” they say.
How about now, Google, and you?
You could have bought the spectrum that you encumbered with “open” rules in the 700 MHz auction, but you didn’t. Now you’re sitting back saying the government should do it for you.
Who would gain from the next administration making broadband “a priority”? Google, of course.
Then I clicked over to the site and saw the evil kid alone at the computer in the living room. Is that a parent drinking wine in the kitchen? Really, I couldn’t help myself.
The campaign “stands for” access, choice, openness, and innovation. What about fair play? Peace? Ending world hunger? A platitude in every pot and a bromide on every CRT.
Really, it’s a bunch of pap that Google will use in Washington, D.C. to insulate itself from competition and drive wealth to its owners. Seeking profit is what compaines like Google are supposed to do – but not using the nation’s public policies.
Update: Julian Sanchez nails it with: “All this may have a whiff of ‘and a pony’ about it . . . .”
Over at BroadbandCensus.com, my friend Drew Bennett, who has graciously agreed to be a special correspondent for the publication while he is in New York covering the Personal Democracy Forum, has been pumping out the blog entries.
Here are some of his latest… just from today:
NEW YORK, June 24 – Jonathan Zittrain, author of “The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It,” took to the stage at the Personal Democracy Forum to focus “civic technologies:” the personal computer, spreadsheet applications, Wikipedia, even the Internet itself are all examples. read more
NEW YORK, June 24 – Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig presented his ‘Declaration For Independence’ to the Personal Democracy Forum here today, fingering this problem in the American political system: the perception of a government disproportionately influenced by the stakeholders that fund political campaigns. read more
NEW YORK, June 24 – “What happens next?” is the question Andrew Rasiej used to start off the Tuesday morning panel discussion at the Personal Democracy Forum here. read more
The complete index page of articles, blog posts, and press releases on BroadbandCensus.com is available here.
Over at the Communications Workers of America’s blog, Speed Matters, the union claims credit for the Federal Communications Commission’s recent order requiring broadband companies to provide the FCC with more information, including data about availability by Census tract.
The blog notes:
The CWA Speed Matters campaign can claim another victory – this time at the FCC. As part of our Speed Matters campaign, CWA called on the FCC to increase its definition of “high speed” – a definition that had not changed for nine years — and to improve its broadband data collection.
Well, it is possible that the FCC’s broadband data collection will be improved. But the public is not likely to benefit from any improvements. Continue reading →
The subject of tiered access to high-speed internet services has been much in the news, with the announcements by Time Warner Cable, and also Cox Communications, that they would roll out tiered services.Well, the news out of NXTcomm08, the telecommunications industry conference last week in Las Vegas, only seems to underscore the prospect that greater control by network providers is on the horizon. According to a survey by Tellabs and research firm IDC, telecommunications professionals are split down the middle on whether increasing bandwidth demands are likely to “break” the Internet.
According to the survey, half of respondents said bandwidth demands would “break” the Internet.
Of greater interest, in my opinion:
Of the 80% who identified a way to deal with internet congestion, 32% think providers address spikes in traffic by prioritizing via packet inspection, while 24% believe that spikes are better handled by charging more for excess bandwidth.
My friend Chris Parente blogged about this development on Saturday, and he was kind enough to ask for my reaction. This is what I said:
Whether or not new bandwidth demands on the Internet cause carriers to offer tiered pricing or to throttle particular applications or protocols, independent monitoring will be crucial. The core purpose of BroadbandCensus.com is to provide bandwidth consumers, both individuals and businesses, with a place to find local information about broadband availability, competition, speeds, prices and quality of service.
URL: http://broadbandcensus.com/blog/?p=49
Targeted by Chairman Kevin Martin’s apparent war on cable, the cable industry has had a tough time at the FCC of late. Being a cable lobbyist at the FCC today is like being a Communist in the State Department in the 1950s. One can just imagine the question: “Are you now, or have you ever been, a user of coaxial technology?”
That said, the cable folks don’t always lose. Just this Friday, they won one – handing a defeat to Martin. The problem is that its one they really should have lost.
The question at hand (addressed ably by Berin Szoka on Friday, and by Adam Thierer earlier) is whether telephone companies should be able to contact customers who have requested that their phone numbers be switched over to a competitor, and try to convince them not to switch. Several cable firms filed a complaint against Verizon over the practice early this year. The practice is anti-competitive, they said, pointing out that Verizon was able to ply customers with “price incentives and gift cards” to convince them not to switch.
In April, the FCC staff said it would side with the telcos on this one. But on Friday the commission voted 4-1 – with Chairman Martin the only ‘no’ vote – to ban the practice.
That is unfortunate. Far from being a threat to competition, being able to fight to keep your customers – and even to ply them with a few incentives – is at the heart of it. The practice is common in other highly competitive industries – just try letting a magazine subscription expire. In fact, as Verizon’s Tom Tauke argues, cable firms have long engaged in similar activity to keep customers from moving to telco video service. Why should it now be wrong for telcos to do the same thing for telephone services?
I don’t say this often, but Chairman Martin was right on this one. Not because cable should lose, but because consumers would win.
TCS Daily on June 18 ran an essay by me on regulatory policy. I excerpt thus:
In a sense, both models – market and regulatory — are flawed. But there is a difference. For every theory contending that markets fail, there is usually an answering argument that they tend to self-correct. Once, economic theory worried that markets would fail to fund “public goods” like lighthouses—until more careful economics revealed markets doing exactly that. More theory pointed to the evils of monopoly. But in reality a monopolist reaping substantial profits is a big target, with every entrepreneur looking for a substitute good or service. Many of the markets’ self-correcting mechanisms are simple Darwinism. Poor investors and badly run businesses lose (their own) money until they go under. Technology and other factors that bring change keep even established firms on their toes.
In contrast, self-correction is not a common response to regulatory failures. There is no good explanation for how an agency or a system of rules can be designed to systematically succeed or self-correct.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.