Tag Archives: broadband

Caribbean media producers need paid prioritization

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In his 2015 open internet order, former Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler argued for a seamless internet that promotes a virtuous cycle of innovation.  This seamless internet ecosystem would include every point on the internet between the end user sitting at his laptop or on his smartphone and the website from whence the end user is attempting to download information. To ensure this seamless experience, Mr Wheeler invoked the four open internet principles of transparency; no paid prioritization; no throttling of a website’s traffic; and no blocking an end user’s attempt to access the website of her choosing.

As of 11 June 2018, Mr Wheeler’s rules are no more, repealed and replaced by the Restoring Internet Freedom order issued by the Commission in December 2017.  While the Restoring Internet Freedom order kept language from the open internet order that addressed transparency i.e. the public disclosure of accurate information regarding network management practices, performance characteristics, and terms and conditions of service, etc., it repealed language addressing throttling of traffic from website, paid prioritization creating faster lanes for content providers, and blocking consumer access to legal websites.

The 2017 order addresses throttling, blocking, and paid prioritization concerns by providing language defining reasonable network practices. A network management practice is reasonable if it takes into account a legitimate business goal, the network’s architecture, and the technology of the broadband service. But critics of the Restoring Internet Freedom order are interpreting the repeal as authorizing ISPs to block or throttle internet traffic or allow large content providers to pay ISPS for the privilege of faster data lanes to their subscribers.

Critics can also be found in state legislatures where, according to data compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures, 65 pieces of legislation were offered in state legislatures that put the FCC’s 2015 rules on net neutrality into state law. Eight of these states (California, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia have metropolitan areas where significant Caribbean populations are located.  None of these states have enacted net neutrality legislation yet. Net neutrality legislation has already failed to pass in three of these states: Georgia, Maryland, and Virginia.

I understand the idea of transparency because of the importance it plays in negotiating for broadband access services. I never understood, however, why so-called proponents of net neutrality rules were against voluntary strategic partnerships between ISPs and content providers.  For example, the Caribbean has an emerging entertainment industry, one that recognizes the benefits of digitization. In the 21st century artists have to leverage the internet to get to an audience that is viewing more video traffic via mobile. Getting in front of a sizeable Caribbean immigrant audience in the United States may mean leveraging paid prioritization in order to ensure the availability of bandwidth necessary to stream video and music.

The FCC’s decision to repeal paid prioritization may benefit entertainment producers from the Caribbean in the long run.  Attempts by the states to balkanize communications regulation should not be allowed.

A market-based, voluntary open internet, privacy regime is doable

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The best protection on the internet is self-protection and a self-protection regime does not have to be implemented via any additional government rules. Rather, for a subscriber to broadband access services provided by an internet service provider, the subscriber should avail themselves of the opportunity to enter into voluntary agreements as to the level of privacy and open internet protections they wish to purchase. The discussion regarding the confusing legal verbiage of written terms and conditions offered to a broadband access subscriber by an ISP should raise the question, “Would transparency best brought about if negotiation of agreements were more bilateral in nature?”

Before delving in any further to the primary question, let me attempt to dispose of one other question that arose in your mind when I posed the first question. “Do people have time to negotiate an agreement for broadband access services?” My response: “Why not?”

Advocates for net neutrality rules captured in the Federal Communications Commission’ 2015 Open Internet Order argue that broadband is now an essential part of the life of the individual and that today’s economy is robust because of high-speed access to the internet. Broadband access, the advocates would argue, should be treated like a utility service given its importance in sustaining the household.

Some would argue that broadband access does not arrive to the level of human necessity, no matter what a number of international organizations have argued.  Among those in disagreement with the “broadband equal to a utility” argument is FCC member Michael O’Rielly, who on a number of occasions has clearly expressed that people do not need broadband to live.  Mr O’Rielly is not alone in his assessment. His two other Republican colleagues, FCC chairman Ajit Pai and FCC member Brendon Carr also agree that 20th century treatment of a competitive 21st century technology such as broadband should not be regulated as a utility.

But for the sake of argument, let us say that broadband access arises to the level of a utility service. If it is that important to life, why would you not negotiate its terms and conditions?  During a negotiation for broadband access, more than likely the ISP would offer some canned language describing minimum services with a list of add-ons and opt-ins for the subscriber to voluntarily agree to. The ISP may offer different tiers of service where each tier provides various levels of privacy protection, transparency, and options for download and upload speeds. If technology permits, there could even be allowance for traffic from chosen websites that receive priority.

In the end, a subscriber’s willingness and ability to pay for different tiers of service will determine the level and amount of privacy and openness she receives on the internet.

I think an answer from the second question provides an answer to the first. Negotiating terms and conditions of service should lead to more transparency because the consumer had a direct hand in creating her services package.  The subscriber would have first hand knowledge about the amount of privacy protection she has bargained for.  But the direct hand in negotiating agreements requires the subscriber’s willingness to educate herself on how her product works. This is a level of knowledge that consumers fail to obtain because they may consider gaining that knowledge to expensive and time consuming. Hence their love for consumer protection agents. They can punt the responsibility of an alleged important, utility style service to them.

Old school regulation of internet service providers raises the threat of less broadband competition and more consolidation

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Yesterday’s vote in the U.S. Senate that upended the Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of its net neutrality rules was more political grandstanding than good policymaking. S.J. Res. 52 nullified the Commission’s “Restoring Internet Freedom” rules that would have gone into effect on 11 June 2018. The Restoring Internet Freedom rules reclassified broadband access service as an information service; reinstated private mobile service classification of mobile broadband internet access service; required internet access service providers to disclose information about their network management practices, commercial terms and conditions, and performance characteristics; and eliminated the internet conduct standards and bright-line rules.

By repealing the Commission’s Restoring Internet Freedom rules, the Senate signaled its preference for the Commission’s 2015 Open Internet order. The order, based on the premise that broadband access providers posed a threat to openness on the internet and could hinder the virtuous cycle of innovation being introduced by edge providers, the Commission created a regulatory framework that classified broadband access service as a telecommunications service. The 2015 order also established what it referred to as “bright-line” rules that prohibited paid prioritization; the throttling of traffic from websites; and the blocking of consumer access to the legal online content of their choice. In addition, broadband access providers were required to provide consumers with information as to their network management practices, network performance, and commercial terms and conditions. The rationale for this transparency was the need to ensure that consumers made choices based on accurate information.

With its declaration that broadband access is a telecommunications service, the 2015 order subjects broadband access providers to certain sections of the Communications Act of 1934, specifically sections 201, 202, and 208. Although the Commission expressed an intent to not regulate the rates that broadband access providers charge consumers, including edge providers, section 201 of the Communications Act allows broadband access providers to establish different classifications of service.

For example, services may be classified into day, night, repeated, unrepeated, letter, commercial, press, government, etc. So, while no content delivery service can pay a broadband access provider a little extra in order to have their traffic placed ahead of another content provider while in the same class of service, section 201 allows broadband access providers to establish different classes of service that content providers can explore and use.

Let us assume that for some reason the resolution is also approved in the U.S. House of Representatives and President Trump fails to issue a veto. Given the application of sections 201, 202, and 208, small broadband access providers may be faced with the opportunity of being acquired. If a large broadband access provider offers various classes of broadband access, it in essence is carving out smaller markets within which it will dominate. If a broadband access provider carves out a classification that competes with a smaller broadband access provider, that smaller provider will face existential choices. Either lower its rates to where it no longer sees a profit and eventually leaves the market or be acquired which means getting to non-existence a lot faster. The 2015 Open Internet order could well be an example of how regulation stifles competition.

Lastly, I would expect that states will want to get in on the action. I have made this argument before. Under a 2015 Open Internet order regime, states will reassert themselves as the frontline for consumer protection. State public utility commissions don’t see themselves as agencies that sit around and handle consumer complaints all day. They rather those annoying complaints be addressed by their states’ respective attorneys general. State public utilities would rather flex their muscles in the pricing arena and will probably tailor state rules that align with sections 201, 202, and 208 of the federal communications act. The rules and the accompanying administrative procedures that broadband access providers would have to comply with will become burdensome on smaller players.

The result: regulation creating a less competitive market.

Will states seize the opening if net neutrality rules are resurrected?

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11 June 2018. On this date the decision by the Federal Communications Commission that repealed the 2015 Open Internet Order will go into effect. Democratic members of the United States Senate hope to vote on a resolution that nullifies this recent decision by the Commission. In other words, the Democrats want to roll back to the way things were in 2015 with the Commission regulating broadband internet access service as if broadband access was a telephone service.

The Senate’s vote, expected to take place the middle of next week, is expected to go nowhere in the U.S. House of Representatives where Republicans hold firmer control. Partisanship is expected to rein supreme. And even if the House were to join the Senate in condemning the Commission’s decision to repeal net neutrality regulations, President trump is expected to veto the bill, sending it back to Congress where an override of the veto has next to no chance of happening.

For students of federal government, this congressional review action demonstrates a major weakness in the legislative branch of federal government. Congress may hold the purse strings, but when it comes to wielding any power, Congress is slow, its actions cumbersome. It is no wonder it gets accused of doing nothing. It is not that it doesn’t try. Congress is designed not to usurp the power of the executive, but simply to keep him or her in check.

Congressional Democrats could have expended energy drafting legislation that not only codified open internet principles but addressed transparency and privacy of consumer data handed over to social media firms such as Facebook or Twitter.  But when it’s time for political theater, no place is better than the chambers of Congress. Senator McCarthy’s search for communists. The Warren Commission. The Nixon impeachment. Iran/Contra hearings on Oliver North’s gun trading in Nicaragua. The Clinton impeachment. All great theater. Democrats may want to add to this list a vote on net neutrality.

Unfortunately for the Democrats, Congress will slide into a couple summer recesses mixed in with campaigning for the November 2018 midterm elections. Except for uninformed millennials and assorted nerds, there will be little attention paid to net neutrality.

Twenty-two states will give repeal the college try, however. A lawsuit filed by a number of state attorneys general hopes to show that the Commission’s action was arbitrary and capricious. I suspect that even if the states were successful in their attempt to overturn the repeal via the courts, I don’t see them doing much on the state utility commission level to regulate broadband access providers.  Just let their states AGs expend resources to tackle on a case-by-case basis complaints alleging throttling, blocking, and lack of transparency on the part of providers. Regulating broadband as a telephone service is fun to say and probably gets a few voter brownie points, but states have spent the past two decades moving away from utility-style regulation of phone services and are not about to roll the clock backward.

Besides, the old heads like me who were members of the public utility commission staffs that did the regulating have moved on and aren’t interested in revisiting the ghosts.

 

Is broadband access less about connectivity and more about individuality?

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My sister recently experimented with Whole Foods‘ delivery service. As an Amazon Prime member, she could take advantage of no cost delivery to her home in the West End. This is a smart move on the part of Whole Foods to deliver to the West End, an area where the median household income is lower than the rest of Atlanta’s sectors. My observation has nothing to do with the wishful thinking that Whole Foods is practicing altruism, but the probability that Whole Foods is betting on the continued gentrification of the area; that it makes sense to plant a flag in the area so that when higher-income, cheap rent seeking young white couples move into the area, Whole Foods will be there to greet them. And while increasing the area’s investment value may not have been on the top of Whole Foods’ agenda, current property holders can at least tell their friends living in other areas of the city that they have not been left out of high-end food delivery options.

Going online and ordering your groceries is an example of what the long-term purpose of broadband connectivity is all about, especially for those with capital. If we accept the Facebook model of broadband and the internet, then we support the argument that broadband and the internet are about connecting people for the sake of creating a larger global community that leads to more democracy, peace, and understanding. This is one of the premises underlying net neutrality; the creation and maintenance of an open internet.  Two billion people connecting on Facebook may be deemed evidence that the globe is demanding this type of connectivity and community development on the world wide web, but such a view fails to account for the “politico-economic physics” of broadband and the internet. I believe the true value of broadband access lies in the empowerment that broadband access creates in the individual. The universe revolves around her and not the other way around.

The internet, at least for those with capital, is about bending the four-dimensional characteristics of space time and enhancing her sovereignty; creating a self-sufficient lifestyle for her. High value individuals don’t see the platforms upon which they move through space and time as flat or linear. The platform is geodesic; a curved line that provides the shortest distance between two points. In this case, between capital and the products and services that capital can acquire. The closer broadband technology brings her to sources of goods and services, the tighter her enclosure around her. She is not creating inclusiveness, or a bigger tent. In actuality, her tent becomes tighter, filled with other high value resources including friends and business associates. Creating a sovereignty blocks out the noise that the internet is becoming increasingly known for.

I would argue further that as her capital and value grows the more space-time bends around her. She creates a gravitational pull attracting even more resources, income, and opportunities. Those who argue for equality and democracy on the internet overlook this important value element. High value, capital holding consumers on the internet bend space-time toward them and high value content and service deliverers will point their commercial starships in the direction of high value.

How should policy react? It can either acknowledge the individual’s use of broadband to create a sovereign individual while transmitting her consumer energy into her tight commercial space or it can regulate her relationship with the points of commercial light within her internet space and risk forcing her to engage with value deficient “black holes” that threaten to reduce her incentive to engage in e-commerce or change her engagement in such a way that the value she receives and transmits is reduced. Policy should opt for protecting her choice for engaging with the value providers of her choice.

The President’s 5G public works project

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It is election year and President Trump is signaling that he is well aware that priming the economic pump to quench America’s thirst for growth in the economy may buy him some political capital while helping his fellow Republicans in the Congress and maybe a few Republican governors and state house members retain their seats. Today’s latest political proposal: construction of a nation-wide 5G communications network by the federal government.

Reuters reported earlier today that among the Trump administration’s initiatives to address potential Chinese hacks of America’s communications systems is the construction of a 5G network by the U.S. government. According to the report, the idea is still being considered among lower ranking staff within the Administration and proposals may not get to the President for another six to eight months.

Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai was quick to respond this morning to the 5G proposal. Mr Pai argued in his brief statement that construction of this latest generation of high-speed communications network was best left to the market. Rather than going down a costly and eventually unproductive path, the chairman recommended that federal policy stay the course and focus on getting more spectrum, that portion of electromagnetic waves necessary for making calls and moving mobile data, into the commercial space.

Again, Mr Pai demonstrated that he is one Republican that attempts to be practical.

Progressives haven’t come out one way or the other …. yet. Progressives have thrown support in the past behind the idea that initiatives on the part of municipalities to build their own broadband networks, premised on the need for access to affordable broadband in the face of a lack of supply by large carriers such as AT&T and Comcast. On first blush, Mr Trump’s idea seems to be nothing but municipal broadband on steroids, just on a national level.

I doubt, however, that advocacy groups like Public Knowledge or Free Press are going to jump on the opportunity to provide Mr Trump with any favorable optics on this issue. The last thing progressives want to risk is giving the Administration any type of lifeline that would help pull Mr Trump’s popularity into the respectable zone.

Mr Trump could have used the opportunity to make a political play based on economic stimulus a nation-wide project like this could provide. He could have sold it like his version of the Hoover dam, especially in rural or mountainous areas where broadband companies have dared not tread because of sparser populations and rough topography. The Deplorables in flyover states and the Forgotten that inhabit the insular territories of the Caribbean and the Pacific would have warmed up to Mr Trump’s goody bag of 5G services by 2021,especially if the idea is sold as another job creator.

Mr Trump will have to sell broadband access providers on the idea of falling on their swords and taking one in the national interest. According to NCTA, broadband providers have invested $1.4 trillion in constructing and deployong broadband networks. The cable industry alone claims to have made a $275 billion investment in broadband infrastructure.  They are not about to tell investors that future returns on this investment are about to be pushed aside by a public works communications project designed to keep China from eavesdropping on two ex-college room mates talking recipes for peach cobbler and the latest #MeToo campaign.

Listening to the whiny left on net neutrality can leave you jaded about “edge” technology

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Over the past week, a number of progressive grass roots groups and some 21 state attorneys general have filed suit in federal appellate courts seeking to overturn the Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of net neutrality rules that were promulgated in December 2015. This early in the process the petitions have laid out general assertions that the Commission’s decision to repeal was arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of agency discretion.

In other words, the Commission, dominated by three Republicans to two lone Democrats, was given to sudden and unaccountable mood swings as it went from determining in 2015 that broadband access providers should be viewed as old style telephone companies to last year’s decision where the Commission now views broadband access providers as information service providers.

I don’t see how the left’s position, that the Commission should use rules for regulating a point to point communications service, is to increase broadband access for insular communities like the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. According to Commission data, 66% of population in U.S. territories lacks access to 25 megabit per second download, 3 megabit per second upload broadband access services.  The flexibility required for deploying more advanced broadband access services in U.S. territories like the USVI and Puerto Rico cannot manifest itself in a regulatory framework that requires a body of regulators give approval or delay proceedings necessary for approving the introduction of new services.

The real arbitrary behavior took place when the Commission, led by Democrat Tom Wheeler, actually persuaded two other Democratic members of the board and some four million naive voters and taxpayers, that the Commission was actually in a position to ensure traffic neutrality throughout the entire internet; from the voter and taxpayer’s laptop to her favorite porn site hosted on a server located in the Azores. For Mr Wheeler to premise a ridiculous expansion of the Communications Act on the assertion that the Commission, via regulation, could ensure that all traffic be treated equally on the internet only resulted in creating false expectations regarding service among a public that couldn’t tell you exactly what net neutrality is in the first place.

The Commission, now led by Ajit Pai, has, if anything, reintroduced some reality into communications regulation. The first reality is that Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 is not necessary for regulating advanced, broadband internet access services in the 21st century. Second, the repeal of the 2015 Wheeler order recognizes that providing American consumers with the best access to a global, interconnected computer network means being able to leverage the openness of the internet to provide new services in a permission-less environment.

It is ironic that the edge providers that want their subscribers to access their content on the highest quality communications networks are willing to endure delays that will certainly arise under a Title II regime that requires permission to innovate at every turn.

Trump uses broadband to shore up and keep his rural base

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During a speech in Nashville, Tennessee, President Donald Trump announced that he had signed an executive order designed to increase broadband access to 23 million underserved residents of rural America. The initiative involves recommitting to prior attempts to use federal facilities as sites for commercial wireless broadband facilities. Streamlining siting policy for broadband infrastructure by using federal property is seen as a way to “reduce barriers to capital investment, remove obstacles to broadband services, and more efficiently employ government resources.”

Mr Trump’s announcement was made at the American Farm Bureau Federation’s annual convention just prior to the President heading further south to attend the national football championship game in the undisputed capital of the south, Atlanta. The southern flavor of the event is further flavored by the two southern teams that are playing, the University of Georgia and the University of Alabama. In my view, the convention, announcement, and attendance at the game is a great kickoff for the 2018 midterms, where getting out Mr Trump’s base will be crucial not only for the elections this November, but for the 2020 elections as well.

This may be the first of many salvos during the 2018 campaign. The connectivity and inclusion of rural America has also been the concern of Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.  Mr Pai is from the Midwest and has placed closing the digital divide high on his priority list arguably being a close second in priority to overturning the Commission’s net neutrality rules, which were repealed last month. He fervently believes that high-speed broadband access to the internet can level the economic playing field for rural residents.

The connectivity issue goes beyond technology and economics. According to an article in The Washington Post, rural Americans feel deeply estranged from their fellow Americans that live in urban areas.  Almost seven out of ten Americans living in rural areas find their values out of sync with the values of big city dwellers. The federal government is perceived by rural America as favoring urban dwellers over them.

And it doesn’t appear that rural Americans want to connect with urban Americans, broadband connectivity or not. They appear satisfied by their own social fabric, comfortable in their culture, one that sees each of them looking out for the other.

Broadband connectivity may improve their ability to move goods to markets, but it may also further enhance internal rural bonds. And given Mr Trumps penchant for social media, especially Twitter, rural America will be able to maintain a connection with the only urban dweller that matters to them.

ISPs got there first. Let it go …

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People and associations protesting against the Federal Communications Commission’s reversal of its network neutrality rules are really railing against the fact that current large broadband access providers entrenched themselves between the consumers of communications services and global networks in some before anyone else could. AT&T, Comcast, Charter, and Verizon used private capital and government charters and licenses to carve out territory within which they deployed the networks that connect consumers to that near invisible cloud of interconnected computers that we call the internet. I can’t hate on them for being first.

Net neutrality rules proponents want to dampen this advantage by preventing broadband access providers from blocking traffic from particular content providers; preventing broadband providers from slowing down the speed at which data flows from particular content providers; prohibiting content providers from entering agreements with broadband providers that allow a higher priority be placed on a particular content provider’s traffic; and making transparent to consumers the management practices of broadband providers including pricing, terms, and conditions of service.

The irony of these rules as proposed by allegedly freedom loving advocates is that they are designed to restrict how broadband access providers are to ascertain the value of the traffic that they are requested to transmit across their networks. Businesses assess the value of product, services, goods, information coming across property for determining how much of that value they can extract for themselves. The value extracted hopefully covers the cost of doing business plus profit. Broadband access providers do the same thing, assessing the value of the digital traffic coming across its networks and extracting value in the form of compensation. The greater the value, the greater the compensation.

On the consumer side, how she evaluates value is subject to her personal marginal utility of benefits, to coin the standard economic phrase and accompanying argument. To her, watching African American women twerk at a party on Instagram brings value, but should a doctor consuming video traffic that documents surgery have to risk her video running at a slower speed than a twerker’s in order to comply with a faulty notion of equality of content?

My bias is toward information that actually results in societal improvement, and while I have no problem enjoying the female form, society as a whole gets more mileage where information that helps us better manage our capital and health takes a priority to a cat video or gyrating ass.

Society also gets more mileage where producers and consumers are free to determine what communications they exchange and the terms and conditions of that exchange. This is the problem when we don’t separate content, which is designed to keep people momentarily contented, with information, which should be designed to continuously inform. We have a lot of content floating across our global interconnected networks, and network neutrality rules proponents use the freedom of expression argument to ensure this content gets equal treatment. Prioritizing content on the internet should not be looked at as an attack on freedom of expression, not when there are other outlets available for expression.

What the network neutrality rules proponents always leave out of their argument is the value of the expressions being shared. If they are that serious about their voices being heard over a particular medium such as the internet, then maybe they should put together the capital and construct the technology that ensures their equal access or expression.

Net neutrality rules proceeded from a no value premise

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Back in the early 1990s, a higher value was placed by the consumer on her use of the internet and the dial-up services that were used to access it. It was expensive paying either per use or per minute or hour or day depending on your AOL package. The analog telephone service sometime required additional toll fees to access online providers. You didn’t take for granted your time used to access or be online. You made a cost=benefit analysis regarding the time online and paid for the value of the information you retrieved.

Our perspective on value for being online has changed. We have gone from waiting till after 9 pm or weekends to make a long distance call in order to save on toll fees to having bundled wire or wireless services that have eliminated toll calling. You no longer wait minutes for a 100-page document. Such a document can be downloaded in and shared with others around the globe in seconds. Our appreciation for the cost of being online has fallen so low that a significant number of Americans believe that using online resources to transmit videos of singing cats has equal value to data containing vital procedures for surgery.

Net neutrality has spawned the delusion that democracy requires equal treatment of all traffic, no matter how mundane, non-substantive, or perverse. It is time to reverse this perversion by imputing a value component to online access and data exchange. A crucial first step toward bringing back value is the repeal of the Federal Communications Commission’s 2015 open internet order and the no-value rules that it created.

True network neutrality cannot occur if agreements on the pricing of the exchange of traffic are overseen by the federal government.  Content delivery networks, internet information portals, and broadband access providers should negotiate traffic exchange freely and allow their assessment of the value of traffic exchange determine price. These carriers have data on the value the consumer places on their content and access services and can design the proper price points for recovering costs and generating profits.

For the end-use consumer, a day of reckoning will occur. Will they meet the new demand for price recovery issued by content providers by paying higher prices?  Or will they spend less time on the internet? Some may see value by paying additional fees to content providers. For those who don’t, they will threaten to abandon internet networks or reduce the time spent on them. This will provide content and network providers to become innovative by providing tiers of services that give the consumer additional flexibility on payment and usage.

In the end, network neutrality won’t “destroy democracy” on the internet. To be technical, democracy is about choosing political leaders and until we have elections via the internet, the democracy argument is nonsense. What we will have, with the elimination of these rules, is a conduit of commerce being subjected to market rules voluntarily entered into by its participants.