1. Monthly archive
  2. May 2017

May 2017

Internet's biggest players duck net neutrality fight

Some of the biggest names on the internet are trying to stay out of the contentious, public fight over the future of the Obama-era network neutrality rules. Google and other household names encouraged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to enact the rules in 2015. But now with the regulations on the chopping block, those companies believe the change will have little effect on their bottom line and are trying not to get dragged in.

They could face pressure, though, from consumer groups and net neutrality advocates, who see them as crucial allies to saving the rules. Officials at several major tech companies said net neutrality isn't a priority anymore. Many of the companies that were once forceful advocates of the rules no longer think they will be harmed under repeal. Facebook, Google and Microsoft boast market valuations in the hundreds of billions, giving them new power relative to broadband providers.

Commissioner O'Rielly Statement on DC Circuit Decision

I disagreed with the Court’s 2016 split decision, and also disagree with the split decision not to reconsider the matter en banc. However, this issue is somewhat moot for now as the Commission is under new leadership and headed in a far better direction. Rehashing old history here makes little sense, except to highlight the questionable degree of deference the court afforded the Commission – which, in all fairness, should also apply in the event that any future Commission action on net neutrality is reviewed.

Choosing which cable channels to provide is speech, but offering Internet access is not

[Commentary] May 1, the DC Circuit denied the petition for rehearing en banc challenging the soon-to-be replaced network neutrality rules. Judges Brown and Kavanaugh dissented from the denial of rehearing, and each wrote to explain why. Brown and Kavanaugh both argued that Chevron deference doesn’t apply, but it’s Kavanaugh’s second argument that I want to focus on: that net neutrality regulations implicate the First Amendment.

Kavanaugh relies on Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC. The key was that cable programmers and operators “engage in and transmit speech” — mere transmission wasn’t enough. What cable operators speakers was their own programming and their practice of “exercising editorial discretion,” entailing their “‘see[king] to communicate messages.'” Kavanaugh sees Internet service providers as analogous to cable operators.

[Stuart Benjamin is the Douglas B. Maggs Professor of Law, Associate Dean for Research, and co-director of the Center for Innovation Policy at Duke Law School.]

ISP Sonic CEO talks about broadband policy, net neutrality

A Q&A with Dane Jasper, co-founder of Sonic, a Santa-Rosa (CA) based Internet service provider.

Asked, "Why do you support net neutrality and the FCC’s just discarded privacy rules?"

Jasper said, "I think it’s good business to take care of your customers. Your customers will be loyal to you when you take good care of them. That might be good pricing. That might be good customer service. Or it’s that you don’t sell them out to advertisers or that you don’t engage in practices that would violate their privacy for whatever small commercial gain that you might have. Also, I think the ecosystem of the internet is something that needs to be preserved. As I’ve watched the internet blossom from the early start of my career more than 20 years ago, I am stunned by the wonderful ideas and amazing services that people have put together. And they’re the reason that every day, consumers are signing up for Sonic. It’s important to preserve neutrality so we can continue to see great new ideas come to fore, even if those ideas use a ton of bandwidth, or even if those ideas require really low latency."

Q FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has criticized the net neutrality and privacy rules as being examples of “heavy-handed regulation” and regulatory “overreach.” He’s argued that cutting such regulations will increase competition, lower prices and get higher speeds to broadband consumers, because it will encourage innovation on the network side and will free things up so that you can get investment on the network side. What do you say to those arguments?

A One of the things Pai has said is if you regulate broadband like it’s a monopoly, you end up with a monopoly. That’s not entirely unfair. If there is a vibrant, competitive environment with many, many choices, then I think that bad behaviors will be held in check, and innovation in business model and infrastructure and in the network won’t be a bad thing.

In today’s environment, though, where consumers have, in many cases, only one choice at greater than 25 megabits, what we see is rent-seeking behaviors and abuses of the consumer, whether it’s bad customer service or expensive pricing or network neutrality concerns.

Q Has Sonic’s ability to innovate been affected by the FCC’s decision under Obama to re-regulate broadband?

A No. And we certainly supported former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in his efforts to protect network neutrality. And that didn’t hamper our investment or our concerns about our future ability to monetize the networks that we build.

Institute for Telecommunication Sciences Releases Key Software Model to Boost Collaborative Spectrum-Sharing Research

Any agreement to share spectrum bands will require reliable predictions of how that spectrum will perform in the real world. The Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS) recently took a major step toward a more collaborative approach to research in this area by publicly releasing an advanced software model for radio wave propagation in urban environments.

This software can be used by consumers, engineers, scientists and others to explore the behavior of radio waves interacting with buildings, trees, and other environmental features. ITS released the software to the public by publishing source code (link is external) on GitHub, an online platform for open-source code. Posting to GitHub will allow researchers to use and modify the code as they wish, as well as collaborate with other researchers and avoid duplicating efforts. ITS hopes that making its source code freely available can advance development of widely accepted propagation models.

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