Most people are consumers of content, not creators. However, as Web 2.0-style social networking, photo sharing and blogging interactivity increases, more people are and will be producers – and they will want to share their works over the Internet. But as an interesting AP story relates, there’s an imbalance in Internet uploading and downloading – but fortunately there’s no call for net neutrality legislation to address this (at least not yet).
From the article:
The system is a hangover of the old mass media days,” said Paul Saffo, a technology analyst in Palo Alto, Calif. “Some consumers are uploading a tremendous amount of information and that’s the thing the establishment just doesn’t get.”
Cable and phone providers insist they are keeping up with demand, in many cases increasing both upload and download speeds, but they say they haven’t had a huge clamoring for symmetry.
I agree with both of the above views, and I think that the market is responding pretty well to the majority of consumers. Like almost all journalists, Anick Jesdanun, the article’s author, tries to create some sort of conflict or lack of parity – hence the title “Imbalance in Net Speeds Impedes Sharing.” And regarding the state of the marketplace, the author states:
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The FCC website being what it is (or maybe politics being what they are), an agenda is not yet available for the December 20th meeting of the FCC. All eyes are on this meeting because commissioners (including recently de-recused Commissioner Rpbert McDowell) will vote on the AT&T-Bell South merger. However, it now looks like Chairman Martin is also going to take the opportunity to push through a resolution to the cable franchising proceeding that’s been open since January. According to Multichannel News, Martin has circulated a proposed rule that would require local franchising authorities to act on an application for a franchise within 90 days.
Martin, who waited for cable-franchising reform to fizzle on Capitol Hill before shopping his own plan, said FCC pressure on cities and towns to act promptly would produce several benefits, including spurring broadband deployment and lowering cable bills. The 90-day cap would apply to entities that had existing approval to occupy public rights of way presumably phone companies initiating service and cable incumbents seeking renewal. … Martin, who has circulated his plan among the other four FCC members, would like it voted on at the agency’s Dec. 20 open meeting.
There has been a flurry of activity in the docket for this proceeding, so it looks like it might happen. Not having seen the draft rule, I wonder what happens after the 90 days are up. In our recent law review article and comments to the FCC, Jerry Ellig and I proposed just such a regulatory shot clock. We proposed that if a locality doesn’t make a decision either way on an application, then the franchise would be deemed granted with a set of default terms, which could be set the same terms of the incumbent’s franchise, for example. Anybody seen the draft rule?
HONG KONG, December 5, 2006–The convergence of telecommunications and media is posing problem for communications regulators all over the world, and many of them swapped stories here about the best way to cope with rapid technological change.
Most government panelists participating in two morning sessions at the International Telecommunications Union’s Telecom World conference here agreed on the need for a unified communications authority.
But they differed after whether competition policy could prove adequate to dealing with issues of telecommunications and media. In other words, would the need for communications regulation fade over time?
Officials from France and Hong Kong are both in the midst of re-evaluating their existing regulatory structures, which include two separate agencies. In each case, one agency is charged with overseeing broadcasting, and the other agency oversees telephone communications.
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HONG KONG, December 4, 2006–Global regulators had a mixed message for the telecommunications industry here on Monday: Governments should ease restrictions on companies in the presence of competition–but otherwise tighten them.
At the opening forum at Telecom World 2006, government officials from China, Hong Kong, the European Commission and International Telecommunications Union delivered a similar message, but with varying degrees of specificity.
Vivian Reding, the European commissioner responsible for information society and media, was the most direct: “Competition and open markets drive investment and innovation. Monopolies don’t.”
Reding and the other regulators spoke here at the triennial conference of the ITU, a hybrid international body based in Geneva, Switzerland, that is part of the United Nations. The union represents telecommunications companies as well as U.N. member states.
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It looks as if now that national cable franchise reform is dead in Congress, the FCC is moving forward with its proceeding on the issue. According to USA Today, “Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin has proposed rules to make it easier for phone companies and others to jump into the video business.” According to the newspaper’s sources, the new rule would require localities to rule within 90 days on competitive franchise applications by phone companies and others with existing access to public rights-of-way. In a new article in the Journal on Telecommunications & High Technology Law (and a public interest comment), Jerry Ellig and I tell the FCC not only that they should preempt unreasonable local franchise practices, but how they can do so. One of the points we make is that while requiring localities to act expeditiously in making franchise rulings, that’s just a start. The FCC also has the power to curb unreasonable denials of franchises.
In our paper we calculate the cost of franchising to consumers, and it looks like the FCC has such costs in mind. According to the USAT article, “Martin is using the FCC’s upcoming annual report on cable TV prices as ammunition. FCC officials say the report shows that satellite TV and cable TV operators have settled into a cozy duopoly, keeping prices in a steady, upward climb. It shows the average price of cable TV in 2005 was $43.33 a month. Where satellite TV also was available, the average was $43.34. But in markets with another “wired” video provider, the price was dramatically less: $35.94. The upshot: Absent credible land-based rivals, cable TV prices will keep going up.”
This week I appeared on C-SPAN’s weekly program “The Communicators” and discussed a wide variety of communications and media policy issues including: the outlook for telecom & media legislation in the new Democratic Congress, the First Amendment treatment of new media technologies, Net neutrality regulation and the need for universal service and spectrum policy reform.
The video can be viewed here and I apologize in advance if I put you to sleep!
Why didn’t the Baby Bells compete with one another when Congress ended their exclusive franchises in 1996? Each possessed the necessary expertise and vast resources. The FCC was most eager to help. Did the Baby Bells conspire to carve up their territories in order to maintain their respective monopolies? In Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, counsel for Twombly allege that they did, though they can’t cite any direct evidence. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday.
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The once and future chairman of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, John Dingell, recently supported strong net neutrality regulation (to prevent “private taxation of the Internet”) and opposed cable franchise reform. Now he has warned the FCC that it ought to postpone consideration of the AT&T-BellSouth merger until next year. These positions suggest Dingell believes there are benefits of regulation.
Perhaps he does. Yet, this is the same man who forcefully advocated deregulation when Congress debated the Telecommunications Act of 1996. During the floor debate on Aug. 2, 1995, Dingell noted:
… the rates of AT&T, MCI, and Sprint fly in perfect formation. They fly like the formation of the nuts and bolts in an aircraft, all tied together by invisible forces, which has led to a situation where they all make money and nobody gets into that because of the behavior of Judge Green and his law clerks and a gaggle of Justice Department lawyers and three floors of AT&T lawyers, who have been foreclosing the participation of any other person in or outside of the telecommunications industry.
Regulation, although meant to benefit consumers, was exploited by the regualted entities to maintain higher prices even though computers and fiber optics were driving down the cost of providing service.
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John Dingell wasted no time in reasserting his authority over the FCC today. One day after the election that put the Democrats back in charge of the House after 12 years, DIngell–who is expected to take back his old reins as Commerce Committee Chairman–sent a message to the FCC that it should hold off on approving the BellSouth-AT&T merger until next year.
“I think it would be in their interest” said the incoming chairman, adding it “would be in the interest of the [Commerce] Committee” and “in the broad public interest”.
Dingell said that delay was needed to make sure the Department of Justice was “doing its responsibility” and that FCC was ensuring the public interest was served.
Never mind that the merger has already been pending eight months, and has been approved by DOJ and 18 state commissions already. FCC approval in fact was expected last week, until it was pulled from the FCC agenda at the last minute. Dingell would now like the transaction to stew for a few more months. Although later today he backed off the statement a bit, denying he had asked for a postponement, the message was clear, saying he wanted the Commission to avoid “ill will” in dealing with the Commerce Committee.
The whole thing evokes a sense of deja vu. In his long tenure as committee chairman before 1994, Dingell was famous for vigorously asserting authority over the FCC. Of course, Dingell was far from the only chairman to do so. Quaint theories that the FCC is an “independent agency” aside, the Commission has long been considered a “creature of Congress” by members from both parties. But no chairman protected that particular turf more jeolously than Dingell. He brought it almost to the level of an art form.
No one doubts, of course, that agencies are ultimately accountable to lawmakers. But there is something disturbing about the “creature of Congress” theory, especially when the decisions in question is a quasi-judicial one such as a merger approval. Certainly, there would be howls of protest if Congress asked the Justice Department to delay its legal process in a particular case. But the FCC’s processes are apparently fair game.
Don’t expect the Commission to buck Big John on this one. But it provides yet another reason to re-examine the FCC’s status an an “independent” agency, and how that works in practice.
Meanwhile, settle in for an interesting few years.
The cover may feature Kim Jong-il, but you should skip past all that nuclear weapons stuff when you read this week’s Economist magazine and go straight to their special survey on telecommunications. In typical Economist fashion, the series of articles–cited earlier by Jim Harper–covers the length and breath of telecommunications from a global perspective.
Being fairly parochial, however, I found their comments on the neutrality regulation debate in the U.S. of particular interest:
…self-styled defenders of the internet like to portray the net-neutrality debate as a fight to stop evil telecoms firms messing with freedom and innovation. The reality is rather more complicated. For a start, the internet is not, in fact, neutral today. Fast broadband connections already cost more than slower ones, for consumers and businesses alike. As well as buying fast pipes and building huge “server farms”, big companies such as Google and eBay also pay extra for specialist “content delivery” services, such as Akamai, to make their websites download even faster. None of this has hampered innovation or hurt small companies.
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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.