Pro Net Competition: Other Voices

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Broadband Baloney

July 24, 2007 - link >>

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell

American consumers are poised to reap a windfall of benefits from a new wave of broadband deployment. But you would never know it by the rhetoric of those who would have us believe that the nation is falling behind, indeed in free fall.

Looming over the horizon are heavy-handed government mandates setting arbitrary standards, speeds and build-out requirements that could favor some technologies over others, raise prices and degrade service. This would be a mistaken road to take—although it would hardly be the first time in history that alarmists have ignored cold, hard facts in pursuit of bad policy.

Neutralizing our online future

July 16, 2007 - link >>

Robert de Posada, Latino Coalition, Oakland Tribune

RECENTLY in Sacramento, some lawmakers have been flirting with the latest fad idea about regulating the Internet — the so-called “net neutrality” rules. The corporate giants pushing the proposal — Internet companies like Google and eBay — say that the rules are needed to prevent broadband providers like the telephone and cable companies from blocking access to or discriminating against certain Web sites.

Certainly, a “free” and “open” Internet is a concept that everyone supports. But most lawmakers have grown cold to the proposed regulations, with the California Democratic Party even rejecting a net neutrality resolution as part of its platform. Why? The most glaring problem is that the proposed regulations seek to cure a problem on the Internet that doesn’t exist. Worse, the regulations could reverse the competitive downward pressure on broadband prices that has enabled Latinos, who for example make up a quarter of Oakland residents, and communities of color to connect to the Internet, and even kill future investments in online innovation.

For years, Google and others have warned that broadband companies like AT&T would find ways to block consumer access to sites and services that the company somehow does not like. But this Internet apocalypse has not come to pass — and it’s unlikely that it ever will, given the increased competition in the marketplace for broadband consumers. Indeed, there has been not one single complaint that any major telephone

ON THE RECORD: DEBORAH MAJORAS, CHAIRWOMAN, FTC

July 15, 2007 - link >>

San Francisco Chronicle

She shares her thoughts on what her agency can—and cannot—do on everything from mergers to fraud to privacy to gas prices to infomercials

Deborah Platt Majoras, FTC, Chairman, Discussion on Broadband Internet Service

July 14, 2007 - link >>

http://www.c-span.org/homepage.asp?Cat=Series&Code=COM&ShowVidNum=10&Rot_Cat_CD=COM&Rot_HT=206&Rot_WD=&ShowVidDays=365&ShowVidDe

This week’s guests on the Communicators are Robert Atkinson, Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, President and Scott Wallsten, Progress & Freedom Foundation, Communications Policy Studies Director. The two discuss how the United States compares with the rest of the world when it comes to the amount of Americans who have access to broadband Internet service. 

NCTA: Don’t Regulate Net Neutrality

June 15, 2007 - link >>

John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable

The cable industry asked the FCC Friday to leave the Internet unregulated, saying it is network flexibility that has promopted hundreds of billions of dollars in investments in network build-outs and upgrades.

Filing comments in the FCC’s inquiry into network neutrality, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association argued that mandating “net neutrality” is unecessary and counterproductive.

It was the FCC’s decision--which was upheld in court--to remove open access provisions on cable networks, then telephone and wireless networks, that gave impetus to the network neutraliy movement, with a big assist from former AT&T Chairman Ed Whitacre. Whitacre’s claim alarmed Web companies and consumer advocates by openly declaring he thought Google and Yahoo! should have to pay for access to customers via AT&T networks the company hadd invested big bucks in.

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