The 463: Inside Tech Policy

I've Got Your Choke Point Right Here

Net Neutrality legislation may be moribund, but that doesn't mean this issue has gone away.  In what lawyers call a "change in venue", the pro-neutralily folks are using the questions over Comcast's "network management" of BitTorrent traffic to bring the debate directly to the FCC. 

The Comcast issue has been a discussion on blogs and on mailing lists for months, but, this week, it gained much greater awareness when several pro-NN groups filed a petition with the FCC asking it to take action against the cable service provider.  Comcast responded with a statement claiming that it is doing nothing wrong.

The Washington Post notes that this...

...will serve as the first test of the FCC's position on the issue of net neutrality...  The five-member FCC has said it supports the concept, but has not been pressed to enforce it. The agency has also said Internet providers have the right to manage their networks.

CNET has an analysis here.

(Flickr photo attribution)

DOJ Chases the Ghost of Net Neutrality

Out of the blue, the DOJ's antitrust division made a (near two-month late) filing today with the FCC that warned the body of possible harms of net neutrality regulation.

I'll let Cynthia's Brumfield's IP Democracy pick it up from here:

... the Justice Department issued a press release to announce the ex parte filing, which just seems…a little weird, given the nature of the filing. It feels almost like a PR move, or a public political positioning, and is not in keeping with the kind of dry, legalistic press releases DOJ usually issues (“Fujicolor Processing Pleads Guilty to Environmental Crime,” “Missouri Federal Court Permanently Bars Woman From Tax Return Preparation,” “Landmark Settlement Aims to Clean Up Raw Sewage Discharges in Allegheny County”).

So, the DOJ is arguably playing politics, not unsurprising in Washington, but not the usual behavior of the normally staid Antitrust Division of the Justice Department. The document, too, doesn’t read like the usual antitrust analysis. There is little dispassionate weighing of the arguments or rigorous analysis of the facts (a lot of facts are presented regarding how the Internet is flourishing without net neutrality but no real weighing of the arguments and data).

Personally, I think the Justice Department has historically been a model bureaucracy for how it approaches the seriousness of its charter, so I will give them a pass on the tone of the release. But, the timing? Oy. It's so odd that it, in fact, makes the case that the DOJ wasn't "playing politics" because no sane politician would so randomly jump in on an issue so 2006.

In fact, just yesterday, Roy Mark at eWeek wrote in a piece headlined: "Whatever Happened to Net Neutrality?"...

A year ago, network neutrality was roiling Capitol Hill. From Congress to the Federal Communications Commission to the Federal Trade Commission, there wasn't a hotter—or more controversial—tech issue. Today, net neutrality barely raises a yawn among lawmakers....

And, your 463 quote of the day in the same piece:

"They're waiting to fight another day. I don't see signs of it coming back. There's no political will," said Tom Galvin, a partner at Washington's 463 Communications.

The Case for a National Broadband Policy

Some simply say American broadband "sucks."  Others delve into the math problems that make even measuring US broadband capacity often-counter productive.  And, others still insist that all is well today.

Robert Atkinson at The Innovation Technology & Innovation Foundation wraps up much of the current debate about US broadband and makes the case for a national broadband policy that will get the country ahead of Belgium, Canada and France in penetration and speed.  Here's the pdf of the policy paper that came out last Friday.

After the jump is the summary of Atkinson's policy recommendations....

PFF's Tech Policy Agenda

   
The Progress & Freedom Foundation announced its 10-point tech policy plan for the 110th Congress on Friday.  The 10...

1 - Renew fundamental reforms of communications regulations.
2 - Leave network neutrality concerns to the market and antitrust.
3 - Leave content business models and fair use to the market.
4 - When addressing patents, take a first-principles approach to property and innovation.
5 - Enact meaningful reform of archaic media ownerships laws and regulations that hinder media marketplace experimentation.
6- Pursue greater First Amendment parity among modern media providers by leveling the playing field in the direction of greater freedom for all operators / platforms.
7 - Subject data security and privacy proposals to careful benefit-cost analysis, including full examination of consumer benefits from services and technologies affected by these proposals.
8 - Promote pro-competitive, non-regulatory internet governance.
9 - Avoid open-ended, intrusive data retention mandates.
10 - Promote more efficient taxation of telecom services and Internet sales.

The full study with further descriptions of the positions can be downloaded here.  After the jump are two of the full recommendations....

The Net Neutrality "Muddle"

When word got out that the FCC agreed to the terms of the Bell South/AT&T merger with a supposed caveat that Net Neutrality principals must be followed for a good spell, one might have expected that the advocates for NN legislation would be able to build some momentum going into a new Democratic Congress.

Instead, there's been murkiness and disagreement over who "won" the merger deal; respected Internet experts coming out against legislation; and, a neat trick of turning the rhetorical tide back on a lead legislative advocate.

IP Democracy noted this week that:

Four very smart people weigh in today with a Washington Post op-ed piece that argues against imposing net neutrality requirements on broadband providers. David Farber, professor of computer science and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, Michael Katz, professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley (and former top economist at both the FCC and DOJ), Gerald Faulhaber, a professor at the Wharton School and the University of Pennsylvania’s law school, and Christopher Yoo, a law professor at Vanderbilt University, argue that net neutrality laws could stiflle innovation without providing any consumer benefits.

They make a valid case that some kinds of discrimination make intuitive (and probably social and economic) sense, such as ensuring that a patient’s heart monitor gets higher priority than a music download during periods of network congestion. To bar all forms of discrimination might mean harming, not helping, consumers. It’s just not clear “to determine in advance whether a particular practice promotes or harms competition,” they write.

It's not new that any of these professors are against pre-emptive legislation.  But, the collective effort, the timing of the op-ed and the placement in the very-tough-to-get Washington Post is what is notable.

Over at Beet.TV, another Internet OG, Esther Dyson, throws around the "muddle" word and says:

AT&T's New Year's Resolution: Net Neutrality ....

....And, its 2008 resolution.

And, its 2009 resolution -- until July, at least.

Why?

Because 2+2 = compromise.

Or, in other words, because of an ethical decision by a new FCC Republican commissioner to recuse himself from the agency's approval of the AT&T/BellSouth merger, the FCC was left with a partisan deadlock on the merger.

Today, a compromise was found.

The most noisy of the outcomes is that AT&T has apparently agreed to a 30-month pledge not to break net neutrality principles in order to get the approval before the end of the year (and the dawn of a new Congress). From Bloomberg:

In a bow to backers of ``network neutrality,'' AT&T said it would refrain from charging Web companies such as Google Inc. premium fees for faster subscriber access. Neutrality supporters have urged Congress not to let phone companies charge higher fees for faster service, which they liken to the creation of tolls on the Internet.

TechDirt speculates on the realpolitik of why AT&T bit on the compromise.

TechDirt also notes that the deal would include the offering of so-called "naked-DSL" for AT&T customers. This basically means that if you order DSL you don't have a land-line phone (and pay for it).

UPDATE: TechDirt and commentators debate the fine print and differences between IPTV "net neutrality" (which may not be covered here) and more traditional "broadband" net neutrality (which seemingly is.) Eric Schonfeld's
Next Net has a primer (albeit opinion laden) on IPTV and the net neutrality-relevant issues here.

Regardless, Public Knowledge is happy with the deal and tells you why.

And, given that the deal was compromise as the shot clock was running out, we're sure we'll be hearing plenty more competing arguments on what the details really mean.

The FCC's Math Problem

I live in one of the most tech-savvy neighborhoods (Potrero Hill)  in one of the most tech-savvy cities in the world (San Francisco).  Yet, I can't get better than 1.2 Mbps broadband speed from my DSL provider (AT&T).  I tried to upgrade to a higher speed, but, apparently, my home is too far away from where AT&T pumps out extra bandwidth juice.   Seems crazy, self-defeating and depressing all in one.

It takes about 5 Mbps to stream a quality video or do video conferencing without speed bumps.  You need 25 Mbps to 100 Mbps to watch high-def video over the Internet and get what is generally presumed to be "next-generation" Internet services.  And, it's that 100 Mbps figure that tech leaders demanded for 100 million homes and small businesses by 2010 back in 2002. 

Coming on 2007, the Cisco tech policy blog notes that a report just announced that the U.S. has reached 51.4 million subscribers.  But, as the post suggests, we are far away from reaching the halfway point of 100 Mbps in 100 million homes.  That's because of the shady math used to measure what broadband actually is.  As FCC commissioner Michael Copps says, the FCC considers 200 Kbps "broadband."    Basically, that gets you a textual Web page that opens up quickly.  Just don't try to download music, stream video, use the connection for VoIP, play an online game or do anything else that might be considered a normal use of your computer in Korea, France or Japan (where you can get a 26 Mbps connection for $22 a month).

A California Public Utility Commission report on broadband  (pdf here) notes that as the Canadian National Broadband Task Force was determining an appropriate definition, it reported that "among the 14 countries that were surveyed, national definitions of the term ranged from as low as 2 Mbps to high as 30 Mbps."

The CPUC says that the Canadians decided not to define broadband in terms of information transmission rates, but instead...

Can You Read Me Now?

Verizon launched their tech/telecom policy blog this week.  According to the site, PoliBlog seeks to:

"to encourage intelligent discussion of public p olicy issues affecting the telecommunications industry and Verizon in particular. We will do this by posting our own points of view regularly, engaging in conversation with other posters who offer fact-based comments and reacting to the relevant ongoing blogosphere conversation. While no telecommunications subject is considered off-limits, we will focus on policy issues that have implications for the greatest number of companies and consumers."

Interestingly, no mention yet on their views on where net neutrality stands, for that matter, any comment on this wistful piece from Salon that has a subhead that reads:

"In the Capitol Hill battle over Net neutrality, a ragtag army of grass-roots Internet groups, armed with low-budget videos, music parodies and petitions, have the corporate telecoms, and their allies in Congress, on the run."

Our old (but relevant) take on net advocasy and net neutrality is here.

All Tomorrow's Games

The future came to my home last night. Baseball fans know that you can watch just about any baseball game you want with a subscription to MLB.com. Last night, I hooked up my computer to my LCD television and me and my sons watched the Mets-Dodgers game over the Internet.  Yes, that’s the future.

Soon (and by soon, I mean 5-7 years), Comcast and Dish Network and all of the other cable and satellite TV providers will be in a death struggle. Imagine a world where first-run episodes of “Entourage” are offered instead directly from HBO.com. That changes everything. We’ve already seen signs of this change; being able, for example, to get episodes of ABC shows on iTunes. But that’s the On-Demand model; I’m talking about never-seen-before-shows.

Imagine what this will mean....

PFF Aspen Summit Videos

We wrapped up the event here, but check it out for yourself.  PFF has kindly posted video of the event.

See the FTC's Deborah Platt Majoras get engaged on Net Neutrality; watch Disney President Anne Sweeney tell folks how Steve Jobs sold an iTunes partnership; and, learn from Sumner Redstone why he thinks variable pricing for digital content is the way to sell the Long Tail.

Also, check out the panel run by Patrick Ross with key policymakers and staffers that wraps up the Summit with a free-ranging perspective of the key DC folks.  We had to miss it in Aspen, but were very grateful to view it this morning.

And, if you want a three-minute video review of Aspen, VONosphere's Paul Kapustka, has one here.