Oh, No, Mr. Bill! A Former FCC Chairman Opposes Net Neutrality
As the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) during the Clinton Administration, Bill Kennard often tried to do the right thing in the face of daunting odds.
That’s why it was tremendously disappointing to see him on the pages of the New York Times taking a swipe at Net Neutrality. He joins Mike McCurry as perhaps the most prominent of the Clinton Democrats to side with the big telephone and cable companies in their campaign to control the Internet.
Kennard was the person chosen to follow Reed Hundt, in a period of time when Kennard wanted to follow a public interest agenda but was opposed at every turn from every corner in Washington. The deregulatory tide was building, helped along by Congress and even some in Kennard’s FCC. It was start of the death of dial-up, but before the promise of broadband was truly revealed.
In his column, Kennard tried to make the overall point that access to broadband is essential to the country, which is a fine point to make, but that the debate over Net Neutrality is taking attention away from the deployment issue, which is not a fine point to make. Kennard complained that Congress didn’t act to bridge the digital divide “in large part because of the polarizing net neutrality debate.”
He then suggested: “Policymakers should rise above the net neutrality debate and focus on what America truly requires from the Internet: getting affordable broadband access to those who need it.” Considering that the best any consumer can hope for in the foreseeable future is a choice between two high-priced and low-speed broadband providers, the conditions under which access is offered are critical.
That’s what makes Net Neutrality so important and why the dispute over it is so important now. If network operators, including that $2 billion-a-quarter profit machine AT&T, can dictate the terms of the last mile to application and service providers, then affordable broadband will be rendered meaningless. If an affordable broadband policy only expands the reach of the incumbent carriers without creating any new competition or new choices for consumers, then the importance of having Net Neutrality is magnified even more.
Kennard used the tired old telco talking points when referring to Net Neutrality as a battle between the “extremely wealthy,” referring to the Googles of the world and the “merely rich,” meaning the telcos and cable companies. That’s nonsense on any number of levels, but the most important is that Google and other “high tech giants” are success stories working to make certain that other companies and entrepreneurs can follow the same path they did.
They should be praised for spending the money they are on lobbying this issue, not condemned for it. The telephone and cable lobbies are spending much, much more, but don't have the popular support of small business, public interest groups, like Public Knowledge and the broad coalition in favor of Net Neutrality.
The philosophy of those high-tech companies involved in the Net Neutrality fight is a study in contrast with that of the telephone and cable companies. The high-tech firms are well aware they are working to enable their next competitor or challenger. The legislative and regulatory priorities of the telephone and cable companies is to quash any threats to their domains.
Working for affordable, widespread broadband is a worthy goal. But there is no guarantee that anything Kennard proposes will lead to his quest for affordable broadband. The fact that the massive telecom bill was held up in the Senate has very little to do with the bring service to more people.
The national franchise legislation, as written, has no build-out requirements. Even the California statewide franchise bill signed recently by the Governator had a build-out requirement. Re-tooling universal service using reverse auctions or other methods is a good idea for noodling around, but again, is unlikely to produce any substantive results any time soon.
Let’s focus on the short-term protections for the Internet while we can, starting with AT&T swallowing up BellSouth. We can insist on strong Net Neutrality conditions in that deal as we look forward to the 2007 start of a new Congress. At the same time, we can work on a policy to bring affordable broadband to more people. The Senate bill isn't the way to do it.
Most disappointing is the fact that the Baby Bells are essentially holding hostage the deployment of Fiber to the Home (the next generation of Last Mile systems) until they, according to their own statements, see legislative and regulatory ‘relief’ for their anti-Net Neutrality positions. There are some deployments currently aimed at collecting the obvious low hanging fruit (verizon’s Fios project, Qwest’s work in Greenfields) but compared to areas of Japan and Korea the availability and performance of broadband Last Mile systems in the United States is shockingly poor, the only bright spot being the few municipal deployments underway and being considered. And, of course, the Baby Bells are fighting tooth and nail to prevent those.
October 24, 2006 9:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is actually very simple. Either you are a corporation providing the pipes thru which data flows or you are a content provider. They must remain completely separate to avoid any kind of monopolistic behavior and to assure that the information itself remain as unbiased as possible.
Anyone with an ounce of sense can see the power that would accrue through the manipulation and or control of both the medium and the message. This is self evident.
Politicians that have an influence on the outcome that either don't understand this or are influenced by campaign dollars are just another example of how stupid or how corrupt our public officials have become.
It remains to be seen if the country will survive the double whammy of stupidity and corruption. Its is really quite insane that we are paying in the neighborhood of 2 trillion dollars a year for this.
thepeoplechoose
October 24, 2006 10:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is off-topic, but yesterday Democracy Now ran an excerpt of a New York City meeting with FCC Chairman Michael Copps, where he appeared to repudiate former FCC Chairman Michael Powell's support for media consolidation. Here is the portion of his speech they printed (it's a shame I can't find a transcript or audio recording of the entire session):
October 24, 2006 10:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
The Net Neutrality debate is not so much centered on the problems inherent with dual ownership of content and delivery medium, rather it centers on the Telecoms desire to create a preferential pricing structure for their pipes and routers, creating a fast lane and a slow lane, as it were, on a highway which until now all traffic flowed freely and equally. Many are of the opinion, myself included, that this is simply charging twice for a product or service. I pay for my broadband connection, Google and Yahoo pay for their connectivity, and now the Telecoms want to be able to price preferentially transport through their routers and over their network. It is a system which does not value success based on merit and is not in keeping with the most basic tenants of Capitalism.
October 24, 2006 11:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
“When we get to the point of discrimination, there’s also this misnomer when we talk about things like wanting to prioritize videos so things don’t get clogged… We don’t want that either. We don’t think that that’s wrong for the network operators to be able to prioritize certain types of content. So if they want to prioritize telemedicine over data files that makes perfect sense. Let them do it. We’re not opposed to that. The [Net Neutrality] rules that we propose would not do that. Our concern is discriminating among the source or ownership of that content. So if the network operators are put in a position of favoring the Mayo Clinic over Johns Hopkins, that’s a problem. That’s the discrimination. That’s when the network operators become the HMO.”
From
http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2006/06/19/telco-argument-implodes-during-dc-debate/
October 24, 2006 5:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
I read something about this somewhere on the net...
Coult it have been in another corner of the TPM enterprise? If so it still bears repeating. Quoting from his current biography at the Carlyle Group:Leaving the FCC to join companies regulated by it mere months later...I guess this is a pirouette through the revolving door... why should one expect anything but a shilling statement for the telecom industry from a man who is a member of an investment company with a huge portfolio in it and seats on the board of several companies with interests inimical to Net Neutrality, as well?
aMike
October 24, 2006 5:56 PM | Reply | Permalink