Featured · Internet/Telecom · Legal Affairs
Will this FCC legal team learn from the legal mistakes of their predecessors and ensure the FCC has a thorough and a sufficient legal record to justify their legal theories, given that the FCC already has failed twice in crafting legal net neutrality regulations in Comcast v. FCC in 2010 and again in Verizon v. FCC in 2014?
As we’ve often discussed, the Tech World Media is just as hopelessly Leftist and lost as the broader Jurassic Press. They so often get it so very wrong – often because their absurd political perspective warps their alleged “reporting.”
If the FCC believes it needs additional legal authority to ensure no Internet “fast lanes” or “paid prioritization,” it should ask Congress for the authority to do it.
Rep. Henry Waxman, Ranking Member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee,wrote the FCC to propose that the FCC, in its pending Open Internet order remand, “reclassif[y] broadband providers as telecommunications services and then using the modern [Title I] authority of section 706 to set bright-line rules to prevent blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization.”
The FCC’s invitation has prompted a “rainbow of policy and legal proposals” that would explore “new ideas for protecting and promoting the open Internet” by imposing Title II telecommunications regulation on America’s Internet infrastructure.
Featured · Internet/Telecom · Regulation
The FCC’s new professed mantra is “competition competition competition.”
However, the FCC appears to be pursuing a de facto policy of decompetition rather than competition.
There are two core reasons the FCC should not try to preempt State muni-broadband laws.
1. The Supreme Court has already indicated it would be unconstitutional.
2. It would be anti-competitive, the opposite of the FCC’s statutory purpose and legal mandate.
The Internet peering marketplace works exceptionally well and it has for its entire twenty year history. The unparalleled success, growth, and resiliency of the unregulated model for the Internet backbone peering marketplace has been nothing short of phenomenal in enabling and ensuring everyone reasonable access to the Internet.
Featured · Internet/Telecom · Regulation
The Daily Record reports that the Maryland Public Service Commission ruled that Uber is a common carrier subject to its regulatory jurisdiction. The PSC stated: “[W]hen viewed in their totality, the undisputed facts and circumstances in this case make it clear that Uber is engaged in the public transportation of persons for hire. Thus, Uber is a common carrier and a public service company over whom the Commission has jurisdiction…”
The FCC has asserted a foundational regulatory premise that warrants rebuttal and disproving, given that the FCC is considering if Internet access, and Internet backbone peering, should be regulated like a utility under Title II telephone common carrier regulation.
Does Netflix have any responsibility to help provide its users the streaming service that they paid Netflix for by connecting with ISPs in the high quality manner that most all other content delivery networks do? In other words, why is Netflix such an outlier here?
If Netflix’ position on net neutrality was justified on the merits, why does Netflix need to say so many deceptive things that are demonstrably untrue, in order to justify its case for its version of net neutrality?
The all-encompassing government-Internet-power-grab that is Network Neutrality rarely gets outside-the-Tech-World media attention. But Thursday the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted in Democrat Party-line fashion to begin its process of imposing it. This was a big enough deal that it garnered over-the-weekend Big Media coverage from ABC (with a Bloomberg assist) and PBS (with a Washington Post assist).
Net Neutrality activists who have long condemned the FCC for not making the Internet fast enough now condemn the FCC for proposing to make the Internet faster!
Given the avalanche of misinformation and manufactured hysteria by net neutrality proponents over the FCC’s proposed rulemaking to make the FCC’s Open Internet Order comply with the Appeals Court Verizon v. FCC decision, AT&T’s FCC filing here (and below) is a welcome and much-needed total debunking of the call for Title II reclassification of broadband.
As regular readers know, it has been my firm position that, after the DC Circuit’s Verizon decision, absent convincing evidence of market failure and demonstrable consumer harm, the FCC should not try to reinstate the net neutrality regulations the DC Circuit tossed out. Nevertheless, when Chairman Wheeler announced his intent to move forward with yet another net neutrality rulemaking, this time one based on a “commercial reasonableness” standard for assessing Internet providers’ practices, I said in a statement that “there appear to be elements in his proposal that may mitigate the otherwise potential harmful effects of unnecessary government intervention.”
The FCC seems bent on overreaching their legal authority – yet again.
At the NCTA convention, Chairman Wheeler said: “I believe the FCC has the power – and I intend to exercise that power – to preempt state laws that ban competition from community broadband.” And in an FCC blog post, Chairman Wheeler also said this preemption of states on muni-broadband “is an issue that remains high on my agenda, and we will be announcing more on this topic shortly.”
The Federal Communications Commission’s upcoming “incentive” auction of TV airwaves is already at war with itself.
Somehow the FCC imagines it can maximize the revenue necessary to incent TV broadcasters to sell their 600 MHz spectrum by minimizing actual revenue collection via dis-incenting, and even banning some wireless company bids.
Featured · Internet/Telecom · Regulation
From the various reports of briefings about the FCC’s planned rules for the 600 MHz incentive auction, two things appear clear. First, the FCC doesn’t trust market forces. And second, the FCC doesn’t want the highest bidders to win the spectrum.
They’re all actively preparing to enter the over-the-top online video business with their own streaming service or proprietary online programming to compete with Netflix, Hulu, and facilities-based pay-TV providers like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, DirecTV, Dish, AT&T, Verizon, and others.
NEWS: The Heartlander
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