Scott Jordan

The Communications Act is badly outdated. Congress last made major changes to it in 1996—when the Internet was relatively new, before smartphones, and before streaming video. When Congress is able to take up major legislation again, it should replace the current law with a new Communications Act designed for how Americans communicate today and as they are likely to in the years to come.

In this paper, we construct a network cost model to understand the rationality of common requirements on the number and location of interconnection points. We also wish to understand if it is rational to apply these requirements to interconnection between an internet service provider (ISP) and a content delivery network (CDN). We construct a model of ISP traffic-sensitive network costs. We consider an ISP that offers service across the US. We parameterize the model using statistics about the population and locations of people in the contiguous US.

The Federal Communications Commission’s 2018 Restoring Internet Freedom (RIF) Order reclassified mobile broadband Internet access service from a commercial mobile service to a private mobile service, largely by ignoring the integration of the Internet with the telephone network.  This reclassification gave the FCC the license to repeal the 2015 net neutrality rules for mobile broadband service. How did this FCC get to the conclusion that the most important public mobile service of our time is a private mobile service?

The Federal Communications Commission’s 2018 Restoring Internet Freedom (RIF) Order reclassified broadband Internet access service from a telecommunications service to an information service, largely on the basis of an interpretation of broadband service that is fundamentally incorrect.  This reclassification gave the FCC the license not only to repeal the 2015 net neutrality rules, but to abdicate its role overseeing the broadband market.