July 2011

[Commentary] As people do more with their broadband connections — streaming movies, downloading music, moving files to and from the cloud — it might seem natural for Internet service providers to impose data caps on users to manage their networks and deal with congestion.

Wireline data caps are billed as a way to manage traffic, but they could also hamstring the user’s experience, blunt competition online and stymie innovation on the Internet. This problem is of particular concern because there is hardly any competition in high-speed broadband services (speeds above 10 megabits per second). Some users have a choice between a cable company and a phone company. In many areas they have no choice. Caps should not just be a way for Internet providers to extract monopoly rents. Data caps are a blunt way of managing broadband. Moving an extra gigabyte of data at off-peak times costs virtually nothing. Peak demand is the problem. Yet caps make no allowance for this. Moreover, there is no crunch in wireline broadband capacity, as there is in wireless. Internet providers must recoup substantial investments in their networks, but adding capacity is cheaper than putting up a network, and becoming cheaper all the time. Caps can be used anticompetitively — to discourage the use of services that rival an Internet service provider’s in-house offerings.

The Federal Communications Commission should seek to understand how effective they are at relieving congestion and what effect they have on services that rival Internet providers’ in-house offerings, like video. And it should keep an eye on whether caps respond to network efficiency gains and capacity increases. Caps must not impede development of broadband.

AT&T is expected to submit a filing to the Federal Communications Commission on July 25 with a technical explanation on how combining its network with T-Mobile's will create new capacity, a key argument it has made in advocating for the merger.

AT&T argues that merging the two companies' cell networks will create new capacity for smart phones and tablets just as networks are under increasing strain. AT&T also submitted filings to the FCC on July 22, again at the agency's request. One filing aimed to beat back arguments that the merger will kill innovation in the handset market. The other one reinforced AT&T's view that competition in the wireless market should be reviewed on a local basis--where various companies offer service--rather than a national basis, where just four companies compete, including T-Mobile.

"It is clear that AT&T's submission of a new justification for taking over T-Mobile is exactly like the coach of a losing team calling time out so he can work the referees. While the Federal Communications Commission stops its merger review process to examine the new plan, AT&T will use the time to spend more millions of dollars lobbying federal, state and local officials and recruiting non-governmental groups to support what is clearly a failing action," Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said.

The National Association of Broadcasters took aim at the National Broadband Plan in an effort to defend its spectrum turf.

The Federal Communications Commission countered that the association was employing scare tactics instead of working with it on a shared goal of preserving a strong over-the-air broadcasting system. NAB President Gordon Smith said that NAB was providing some "facts" about the impact of repacking and moving channels since the FCC had not come out with its modeling for such impacts, even though NAB had been asking for it. He argued legislators should know those facts before voting on incentive auction legislation. NAB has said it does not oppose incentive auctions, which would compensate broadcasters who want to give up spectrum for re-auctioning, but at the same time it has been making the point that broadcasters have a lot to live for, as it were, including mobile DTV and multicasting and even a one-to-many delivery model for broadband at peak loads times. And it has also pointed out that repacking and moving stations to clear blocks of spectrum for wireless auction is by definition not voluntary and will be disruptive to the stations that remain behind.

Governmentwide guidance on telework does not clearly or comprehensively instruct agencies on incorporating the practice into their emergency planning, according to a new report.

Four agencies provide guidance on telework during emergencies: the Office of Personnel Management, the General Services Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Federal Protective Service. None of the guidance, however, contains a standard definition of how to incorporate telework in individual agency continuity of operations plans or provides "a cohesive set of practices" that agencies can adopt, the Government Accountability Office found. The 2010 Telework Enhancement Act requires agencies to fold their telework policies into their continuity and emergency plans. "This lack of a definition or description calls into question the reliability of the results of a survey OPM annually conducts to assess agencies' progress [on telework]," the report stated. GAO identified other potential problems with the government's telework capabilities in an emergency in the areas of information technology, personnel readiness and program monitoring. Federal wireless networks are increasingly vulnerable to attack, GAO said, and a 2009 review from the watchdog found that, in an emergency where 40 percent or more of the population was absent from school or work, most residential users including federal teleworkers would experience congestion on the Internet.