How does the FCC justify taking action without an adequate evidentiary basis? By relying on a series of fallacies to provide an aura of evidence without actually having any. That’s a problem for an agency that wants to be seen as fact-based and data driven. Fallacies are like zeros: No matter how many you have, you still have nothing.
Yesterday the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), our government’s communications industry experts, issued an order that would flunk an introductory college course in logic. Despite issuing multiple data requests, in October 2011, the FCC told the DC Circuit Court of Appeals that it “lacked a sufficient evidentiary record” to document claims that its “pricing flexibility rules” governing special access were flawed. The FCC’s evidentiary record hasn’t improved, but it suspended its pricing flexibility rules on a so-called “interim” basis anyway while it tries to figure out how to obtain the data it needs to do a transparent, data based analysis. Continue reading →
Yesterday POLITICO Pro said both political parties are on the verge of declaring support for some version of Internet freedom in their 2012 platforms. The Democratic platform contained a lengthy statement in 2008, but according to Politico, its 2012 platform will consist of a simple sentence about protecting the open Internet. Politico also noted that, though Republicans hardly mentioned the Internet in 2008, they are expected to consider several Internet proposals during their platform meeting early next week. Will the new Republican platform address Internet freedom? If so, what is the platform likely to say? Continue reading →
Google’s first lesson for building affordable, one Gbps fiber networks with private capital is crystal clear: If government wants private companies to build ultra high-speed networks, it should start by waiving regulations, fees, and bureaucracy.
Executive Summary
For three years now the Obama Administration and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have been pushing for national broadband connectivity as a way to strengthen our economy, spur innovation, and create new jobs across the country. They know that America requires more private investment to achieve their vision. But, despite their good intentions, their policies haven’t encouraged substantial private investment in communications infrastructure. That’s why the launch of Google Fiber is so critical to policymakers who are seeking to promote investment in next generation networks.
The Google Fiber deployment offers policymakers a rare opportunity to examine policies that successfully spurred new investment in America’s broadband infrastructure. Google’s intent was to “learn how to bring faster and better broadband access to more people.” Over the two years it planned, developed, and built its ultra high-speed fiber network, Google learned a number of valuable lessons for broadband deployment – lessons that policymakers can apply across America to meet our national broadband goals.
To my surprise, however, the policy response to the Google Fiber launch has been tepid. After reviewing Google’s deployment plans, I expected to hear the usual chorus of Rage Against the ISP from Public Knowledge, Free Press, and others from the left-of-center, so-called “public interest” community (PIC) who seek regulation of the Internet as a public utility. Instead, they responded to the launch with deafening silence.
Maybe they were stunned into silence. Google’s deployment is a
real-world rejection of the public interest community’s regulatory agenda more powerful than any hypothetical. Google is building fiber in Kansas City because its officials were willing to waive regulatory barriers to entry that have discouraged broadband deployments in other cities. Google’s first lesson for building affordable, one Gbps fiber networks with private capital is crystal clear: If government wants private companies to build ultra high-speed networks, it should start by waiving regulations, fees, and bureaucracy. Continue reading →
On Forbes today, I have a long article on the progress being made to build gigabit Internet testbeds in the U.S., particularly by Gig.U.
Gig.U is a consortium of research universities and their surrounding communities created a year ago by Blair Levin, an Aspen Institute Fellow and, recently, the principal architect of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan. Its goal is to work with private companies to build ultra high-speed broadband networks with sustainable business models .
Gig.U, along with Google Fiber’s Kansas City project and the White House’s recently-announced US Ignite project, spring from similar origins and have similar goals. Their general belief is that by building ultra high-speed broadband in selected communities, consumers, developers, network operators and investors will get a clear sense of the true value of Internet speeds that are 100 times as fast as those available today through high-speed cable-based networks. And then go build a lot more of them.
Google Fiber, for example, announced last week that it would be offering fully-symmetrical 1 Gbps connections in Kansas City, perhaps as soon as next year. (By comparison, my home broadband service from Xfinity is 10 Mbps download and considerably slower going up.)
US Ignite is encouraging public-private partnerships to build demonstration applications that could take advantage of next generation networks and near-universal adoption. It is also looking at the most obvious regulatory impediments at the federal level that make fiber deployments unnecessarily complicated, painfully slow, and unduly expensive.
I think these projects are encouraging signs of native entrepreneurship focused on solving a worrisome problem: the U.S. is nearing a dangerous stalemate in its communications infrastructure. We have the technology and scale necessary to replace much of our legacy wireline phone networks with native IP broadband. Right now, ultra high-speed broadband is technically possible by running fiber to the home. Indeed, Verizon’s FiOS network currently delivers 300 Mbps broadband and is available to some 15 million homes.
On CNET today, I’ve posted a long critique of the recent report by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) urging the White House to reverse course on a two-year old order to free up more spectrum for mobile users.
In 2010, soon after the FCC’s National Broadband Plan raised alarms about the need for more spectrum for an explosion in mobile broadband use, President Obama issued a Memorandum ordering federal agencies to free up as much as 500 MHz. of radio frequencies currently assigned to them.
After a great deal of dawdling, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which oversees spectrum assignments within the federal government, issued a report earlier this year that seemed to offer progress. 95 MHz. of very attractive spectrum could in fact be cleared in the ten years called for by the White House.
But reading between the lines, it was clear that the 20 agencies involved in the plan had no serious intention of cooperating. Their cost estimates for relocation (which were simply reported by NTIA without any indication of how they’d been arrived at or even whether NTIA had been given any details) appeared to be based on an amount that would make any move economically impossible. Continue reading →
It is unlikely there has ever been a more important figure in the history of regulatory policy than Alfred Kahn. As I noted in this appreciation upon his passing in December 2010, his achievements as both an academic and a policymaker in this arena where monumental. His life was the very embodiment of the phrase “ideas have consequences.” His ideas changed the world profoundly and all consumers owe him a massive debt of gratitude for reversing the anti-consumer regulatory policies that stifled competition, choice, and innovation. It was also my profound pleasure to get to know Fred personally over the last two decades of his life and to enjoy his spectacular wit and unparalleled charm. He was the most gracious and entertaining intellectual I have ever interacted with and I miss him dearly.
As I noted in my earlier appreciation, Fred was a self-described “good liberal Democrat” who was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to serve as Chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board in the mid-1970s and promptly set to work with other liberals, such as Sen. Ted Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, and Ralph Nader, to dismantle anti-consumer airline cartels that had been sustained by government regulation. These men achieved a veritable public policy revolution in just a few short years. Not only did they comprehensively deregulate airline markets but they also got rid of the entire regulatory agency in the process. Folks, that is how you end crony capitalism once and for all! Continue reading →
Is competition really a problem in the tech industry? That was the question the folks over at WebProNews asked me to come on their show and discuss this week. I offer my thoughts in the following 15-minute clip. Also, down below I have embedded a few of my recent relevant essays on this topic, a few of which I mentioned during the show.
As federal regulators launch fresh investigations into Silicon Valley, their history of drawn-out cases has companies on edge. In taking on an industry that moves at lightening speed, federal officials risk actions that could appear to be too heavy-handed or embarrassingly outdated, some analysts and antitrust experts say.
For example, she cites ongoing regulatory oversight of Microsoft and MySpace, even though both companies have fallen from the earlier King of the Hill status in their respective fields. Kang notes that some “want the government to aggressively pursue abusive practices but question whether antitrust laws are too dated to rein in firms that are continually redefining themselves and using their dominance in one arena to press into others.”
Simply put, antitrust can’t keep up with an economy built on Moore’s Law, which refers to the rule of thumb that the processing power of computers doubles roughly every 18 months while prices remain fairly constant. This issue has been the topic of several of my
Forbes columns over the past year, as well as several other essays I’ve written here and elsewhere. [See the list at bottom of this essay.] Moore’s Law has been a relentless regulator of markets and has helped keep the power of “tech titans” in check better than any Beltway regulator ever could. As I noted here before in my essay, “Antitrust & Innovation in the New Economy: The Problem with the Static Equilibrium Mindset“: Continue reading →
The Communications Liberty and Innovation Project (CLIP) recently filed comments at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) opposing an interoperability mandate in the 700 MHz band. CLIP argued that the proposed interoperability mandate would be manifestly unjust. The Supreme Court’s holding in the healthcare opinion issued last week indicates that the mandate could be more than merely unjust: it might be unconstitutional. Continue reading →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology. Learn more about TLF →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.