Network Neutrality

[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.

Over the last two years, the Bay Area’s (CA) community of Internet service providers has been tapping into the region’s bottomless demand for faster speeds at competitive prices. Take Sonic in Santa Rosa (CA). The high-speed broadband provider has doubled in size since 2015, according to CEO Dane Jasper, bolstering its ranks by 188 employees in 2016 alone. The company now employs 418 workers. The Bay Area’s broadband boom, in short, is confounding Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s assurances that the FCC’s approach to regulating Internet providers was stifling the development of Internet infrastructure.

The FCC is working through a proposal that would unwind network neutrality rules, leaving Internet providers to largely regulate themselves when it comes to maintaining an open Internet — a development with troubling consequences for Jasper's Sonic. “We’ve continued to invest in infrastructure deployment and in fact, we’re more concerned about the unlevel playing field that a lack of net neutrality could create,” he said.

[Commentary] Few think about the implications of network neutrality outside of affecting the speed at which one can browse the internet; however, it also influences what you can watch and the online content you can view. Net neutrality is what allows us the freedom to peruse the internet and disseminate content without interference.

Besides affecting personal use, the fate of net neutrality also has a bearing on businesses -- particularly small- to mid-sized businesses (SMBs). Without net neutrality, companies like Netflix would probably be charged an exorbitant amount due to the amount of data needed to stream video at their current speed. These upcharges would then be passed down to the customer. Without net neutrality, you can even expect currently free platforms like YouTube to enact charges or impose more ads. Net neutrality is crucial for the survival of SMBs: without it, the recent bloom of entrepreneurship and startup culture would shrivel up and die. They rely on open internet to, among other things, launch their businesses, advertise, build a community and build a customer base.

Some of the Internet's biggest names are banding together for a “day of action” to oppose the Federal Communications Commission, which is working to undo network neutrality regulations for Internet providers that it passed during the Obama Administration. Among the participants are Etsy, Kickstarter and Mozilla, the maker of the popular Firefox Web browser. Also joining the day of protest will be Reddit, the start-up incubator Y Combinator, and Amazon.

On July 12, the companies and organizations are expected to change their websites to raise awareness of the FCC effort. Mozilla, for example, will change what users see on their screens when they open a new browser window. The digital rally recalls a similar online effort in 2012 by Google, Wikipedia and others to protest federal legislation on Internet piracy. The companies blacked out their websites in an effort to show how the bill could lead to censorship.