Network Neutrality

[Commentary] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s reliance on "real" economists in Econ Cloud Cuckoo Land (ECCL) to reverse Title II reclassification is going to get slammed in the courts big time. I would hope that real world common sense would prevail, and Pai would back away from his ill-considered proposal. But real world common sense is scoffed at in Econ Cloud Cuckoo Land.

As long as Pai continues to prefer Econ Cloud Cuckoo Land over the actual real world, we can expect him to continue to pursue policies that don’t work in the real world and don’t pass muster in court.

[Harold Feld is the senior vice president at Public Knowledge]

[Commentary] Despite Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s claim that he supports Network Neutrality, the proceeding he opened in May attacks not only the legal authority underpinning the rules — which is absolutely vital for enforcing them — but seeks to overturn these protections altogether. If Chairman Pai gets his way, Net Neutrality will be gone for good and people will be left with only the empty promises of big cable companies to protect them online.

This administration has gone after so many crucial consumer protections that we have fought for, from ending exploitative prison-phone rates to banning your internet service provider from selling your personal data. President Donald Trump isn’t working for anyone besides the corporate lobbyists and millionaires that are filling his administration. We’ve fought and won this battle before and we can do so again. But it’s going to take all of us working together. I will do my best working with my colleagues in the Senate to protect internet freedom, but we’ll need all of your voices engaged and ready to fight.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai and Sen Ron Johnson (R-WI) each called network neutrality a "slogan" that solves no real problems, with the senator also arguing that the Internet should have paid fast lanes. "It’s a great slogan," FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said, when asked by a radio host what net neutrality is. "But in reality what it involves is Internet regulation, and the basic question is, 'Do you want the government deciding how the Internet is run?'"

Chairman Pai, who is touring midwestern states to meet with rural Internet service providers about broadband deployment, appeared with Sen Johnson on WTMJ Radio in Milwaukee. "As chairman Pai said, net neutrality is a slogan," Sen Johnson said. "What you really want is an expansion of high-speed broadband, and in order to do that you have to create the incentives for those smaller ISPs to invest. They don’t really control their own fiber if the government tells them exactly how they’re going to use their investment." Because of net neutrality rules, "there’s less incentive to invest, so we’ll have less high-speed broadband," Sen Johnson said.

[Commentary] Since assuming leadership of the Federal Communications Commission earlier in 2017, Ajit Pai has been working to roll back the stifling Obama-era rules to return the power of the internet back to consumers and the public. This will benefit everybody, but this is particularly personal for millennials and young consumers who have grown up online and are driving much of the innovation that we see in Silicon Valley. Tumblr, Mashable and Snapchat are just a handful of the many tech companies that millennials have helped start that are changing the way we live. But if bureaucrats and special interest groups have their way, the government will control the internet and pick winners and losers.

Younger consumers want a better, faster, cheaper internet – and a one-size-fits-all regulation that reflects the world of the 1930s is not the answer.

[David Barnes is the policy director of Generation Opportunity.]

The Federal Communications Commission's network neutrality docket (dubbed "Restoring Internet Freedom") is some 150,000 comments lighter as of June 8. Or at least that is according to the total on the FCC's "most active proceedings" in the last 30 days page, where it still leads the top 10 by a factor of 500 or so. That still leaves 4.78 million comments, though that is down from over 4.9 million from earlier in the week after the docket swelled by a couple of million comments since the week before.

[Commentary] Recently, NCTA, the trade association for the industry formerly known as cable, posted this amazing graph and blog post showing that the "virtuous cycle" the Federal Communications Commission predicted would happen when it adopted the Open Internet rules (a.k.a. net neutrality) back in December 2010. Indeed, as the NCTA graph shows (based on the latest Akamai State of the Internet Report), the average speed of broadband connections has not only continued to rise since the FCC first adopted net neutrality rules in 2010, but the rate of increase has accelerated since the FCC adopted the Title II reclassification Order in February 2015. Finally, as NCTA also points out, in the approximately 10 years since the FCC first began to enforce net neutrality through the "Internet Policy Statement" and the Comcast/BitTorrent Complaint, the cost of moving bits from their source to your home has dropped 90 percent on a per bit basis. (Whether we are actually still paying too much because of our lack of competition in the broadband market is something of a different question.)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this matches the findings from Free Press' Derek Turner in this massive and meticulously documented report, "Broadband Investments And Where To Find Them." But it's still nice to see NCTA confirm it.

[Commentary] Net neutrality debates can devolve quickly into talk of statutory “titles” and legal jargon. When that happens, the practical issues at the heart of these debates can get lost. Throughout all this, however, the nation’s rural broadband providers have focused on one primary and practical concern: the chaos that could ensue in the absence of any “rules of the road” with respect to how rural America connects with the rest of the world. Where does this concern come from? Why would rural America be particularly at risk without basic rules of the road? Well, we’ve seen this play out before in the traditional telecom context. Over the past decade, telephone calls destined for consumers and businesses in rural America have failed all too often because it wasn’t worth the time, effort or cost for some routers to make sure calls complete. I shudder to think what would have happened if the Federal Communications Commission lacked authority to address these concerns when consumers began reporting them years ago. Fortunately, the FCC had the authority in that context to adopt and enforce rules to make sure data flows across networks without interruption, delay or neglect. Whatever title the country lands on in this latest spin of the net neutrality wheel, we cannot abandon rules altogether. There’s a balance to be struck. We must focus on the practical goals and substantive outcomes of this debate: making sure that universal service is sustained and that there’s recourse if small rural providers and their customers are shut out or face massive new and unreasonable costs in today’s and tomorrow’s connected world. As long as practical goals like these remain firmly in the headlights, and as long as the framework adopted is legally sustainable, the exact vehicle we use to get there is of secondary importance.

[Bloomfield is chief executive officer of NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association]

[Commentary] The Federal Communication Commission’s recent vote to begin the process of undoing an Obama-era power grab is the right solution for putting consumers—not lobbyists and lawmakers—in the innovation driver’s seat.

By getting government out of the business of telling ISPs how to run their servers, current FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is working hard to undo net neutrality, putting consumers back in charge of how the internet—and the businesses responsible for building and maintaining the countless millions of internet connections and switches powering the internet—should operate. Decades of internet and networking innovation, enabled by the government’s earlier hands-off approach, has slowed to a crawl because of Wheeler’s rule, but Pai’s quest to reduce regulations on internet providers and other telecommunications companies could once again get government out of the way and turbocharge consumers’ internet experience.

[Hathaway is a research fellow with The Heartland Institute]

Network neutrality continues to make headlines and draw millions of Federal Communications Commission comments, but the top organizations and companies lobbying the FCC have also been focused on other issues, such as the video relay service and fund for rural deployment. In recent weeks, the agency has received over 170 ex parte filings, or lobbying communications companies and associations make with agency staff and commissioners by phone, in person, or in writing. Here are the top five groups lobbying the FCC between May 8 and June 2:

• 1. Sorenson Communications and 2. ZVRS Holding Company: two providers of video relay services, which allow people with hearing disabilities to communicate by phone using sign language.
• 3. NCTA – The Rural Broadband Association submitted eight filings to the FCC, focused mainly on issues related to the Connect America Fund.
• 4. Benton Foundation submitted five filings focused on the net neutrality proceeding.
• 5. NCTA – The Internet and Television Association also submitted five filings on several topics including spectrum policy issues and paper versus electronic notice requirements for consumers.

House Republicans are tying an ongoing process to roll back Obama-era network neutrality rules with their efforts to expand broadband internet access in rural areas. House Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) offered legislation earlier in 2017 to exempt Internet service providers with fewer than 250,000 subscribers from transparency requirements that were mandated under the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet Order. Sen Steve Daines (R-MT) has proposed a similar bill on his side of the Capitol.

“While I applaud strongly and enthusiastically what [FCC] Chairman [Ajit] Pai and the commission approved, it does not cover everything that needs to be covered,” Chairman Walden said. “And so I’m hopeful that we can move forward with the legislation that passed the House by a voice vote in January. Hopefully, the Senate would be able to take that up and move it forward.” Chairman Walden, whose 2nd District in eastern Oregon is nearly 70,000-square-miles in size and largely rural, added that high-speed internet access is a particularly important commodity to constituents who lack access to needed services. “I’ve got three counties with no hospitals and no doctors,” he said. “Access for education, access for tele-health, access for the economy and access to high-speed broadband is essential for their way of life in the modern age. And to me, this is the same as saying they need access to water and power and roads.” That’s a similar theme sounded by Chairman Pai during a swing through five northern states to meet with rural broadband providers about the challenges they face in offering internet service to rural communities.