Congratulations, Comcast. You restored your good name and reputation by beating back the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in court. That little wrist slap the Commission gave you for slowing down traffic in your Internet network a couple of years ago has been avenged. Your record is clean, legally speaking.
Of course, the story isn't all that simple, is it? Because the hidden story of Comcast's glorious victory is that if Comcast were smart, it wouldn't in the first place have brought the case, which challenged the FCC's authority over the company's high-speed Internet service. Some in the telecommunications industry, perhaps even huge companies with three letters in its name, urged (begged?) Comcast not to take the FCC's ruling to court, because of the possibility that Comcast could actually win and, potentially, win big -- which is what happened.
Under normal circumstances, a company like Comcast would feel great, winning a slam-dunk case against a Federal agency. The opinion issued April 6 by the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit, written by Judge David Tatel, was so strong that it even refuted arguments that the FCC didn't make in its defense, but could have. The chances of the FCC asking the U.S. Supreme Court for review are slim and none.
As Comcast has no doubt realized, but won't admit -- winning is a bitch. (They will likely find this out again when they take over NBC, but that's another story.) It's like those stories of the lottery winners who come into millions of dollars, think they are in heaven, but their life becomes a living hell. Comcast has brought down the wrath of its telecommunications brethren, because it has opened the door to something that, in the industry's view, could be much worse than the convoluted, jerry-rigged, barely legal system that allowed the FCC to let Comcast get off so easy.
By winning as big as it did, the result of Comcast's case was that the FCC has, practically speaking, been stripped of its ability to regulate high-speed Internet access (broadband) services. That means if Comcast decided once again to throttle back the Internet traffic of its subscribers, consumers would have little to no recourse. There is no agency, no authority, which could look into a complaint and risk doing anything about it. Practically speaking (even if there is a very slim legal opening), broadband is free from regulation -- a nirvana that the telecoms industry might once upon a time have gratefully accepted as its due, but now looks upon it with some trepidation because now the door has swung wide open to a full-scale discussion of bringing Internet broadband access services back under reasonable regulation.
Digital services offered by telephone companies were offered under regulations until 2005, continuing a line of consumer protections reaching back to 1934. Then it reclassified those digital services into the virtually deregulated bucket of "information services." It was the FCC's decision not to put the then-new cable modem service into that same regulatory bucket in 2002 that started the whole mess we find ourselves in today.
Of course, the industry is big enough to see past the Comcast error and is pressing ahead with its own talking points which will be echoed by assorted industry-friendly spokesmodels.
First, Depend on the Kindness of Strangers. This Blanche Dubois-inspired strategy is based on the simple theme, "trust us." We don't need regulation because we will do the right thing. We will follow the FCC's (now-discredited and incomplete) Internet principles even though we aren't obliged to. We're the telephone (and cable) company, and we wouldn't do anything to hurt our customers. After all, we support an open Internet; we just don't think it's necessary to have any rules that would require us to do so. After all, most Americans have broadband (even if it's only one choice and substandard at that), so why impose harsh, restrictive rules on poor, little old us?
Why, indeed? Perhaps because the concept of noblesse oblige has been replaced, at least in theory, by the rule of law. The companies want to define their own obligations and then enforce them at their whim. Suppose someone wanted to add another principle to the ones that the FCC, thanks to the legal actions of Comcast, can't enforce? Let's say someone wanted to prohibit Internet access companies from discriminating against Web sites on the basis of financial relationships. Or let's say telephone or cable companies moved all their popular services into a more expensive "managed" category, just like a cable network? What could consumers do under the KOS theory? Nothing. And if you have no choice of provider, you're out of luck. But the free market has provided you at least with something, so be grateful, even if the companies with virtually no regulation have led the U.S. consistently downward in the Internet rankings since the deregulation of the past few years, with service more expensive and slower, with fewer choices for consumers than in comparable countries.
Don't buy the argument that new regulation will screw up investment. Companies invest more or less depending on their business plans. With little to no regulation, Verizon will limit its FIOS fiber service to about half of its customers. AT&T hasn't deployed any fiber to the home.
The second option is to Wait for Godot. If one cannot depend on the kindness of strangers, then, the industry contends, it should be up to Congress to change the rules. We can't depend on unelected bureaucrats to deal with topics as essential as broadband, because the result could be "excessive and burdensome regulation" on those humble, hard-working telephone and cable companies who unfairly change the rules without any reason at all.
Of course, no one complained about the "unelected bureaucrats" at the FCC over the past eight years (from the telephone side -- the cable guys had some beefs) when the industry pretty much got everything it wanted. No one complained when the FCC reclassified Internet access broadband service from traditional regulation into the regulatory nether world.
But asking Congress to intervene? In case anyone hasn't been paying attention, Congress is at near paralysis. It would take years, if ever, for Congress to pass something. Even then, if Congress did pass a bill the phone and cable companies would likely come out the winners because of the power of the telecommunications lobby. Despite the support of many, but not all, Congressional leaders, there aren't the votes for a strong bill to protect broadband consumers and to promote competition. If there were, it would have been done long ago. The members of Congress who worry about the burdens on the poor companies aren't as worried that their constituents could get screwed, or that their constituents might deserve better. In the meantime, consumers would be out of luck. The reliance on Congress is a classic misdirection for a solution that will never come.
What's the answer? Do the Right Thing. The FCC can in a number of ways, reverse it's disastrous decisions and put broadband services back under the regulatory umbrella where they belong. There's nothing that says there has to be a heavy regulatory burden, but then the weight of the burden is in the eye of the beholder. No one said that every portion of the law has to apply to services now as they did years ago. The FCC has the discretion to pick and choose to make the "burden" as light or as heavy as it thinks is appropriate.
We need not have, as some commentators call it, the same rules that applied to the monopoly telephone network. On the other hand, some of the same principles, like non-discrimination, should exist regardless of the technology. The regulation of telephone companies existed as the technology evolved from the 1930s through the 2000s. It's flexible and dynamic enough to protect Internet access. The regulatory system that could be put in place would be similar to that in place in the 1990s when, under the Clinton Administration, there were thousands of Internet Service Providers which leased access to telephone company lines and provided new services and choices to millions of consumers. Sadly, that competition was wiped out through the deregulation which followed.
Any regulation is too much for the cable and telephone companies. If the FCC acts in the simple, elegant way that will protect consumers, promote competition and clarify the legal environment for the National Broadband Plan, they will catch holy Hell from every Republican in Congress, at least half the Democrats and will face some years of court suits from the companies. Believe it or not, that's the easy way out. It's the right thing to do and with enough political backing, it just might happen.
And we will have Comcast to thank. Thanks, Comcast. Great win.
Follow Art Brodsky on Twitter: www.twitter.com/artbrodsky
Google for one, will have a heyday with them throttling back everyone equally. They'll have communities lining up to get access to unlimited bandwidth services from them. Those giant cloud-based data centers sprinkled across the country-side look smarter and smarter.
Right before my move, I called Qwest and asked if I could continue my DSL. They assured me that I could. After I moved and had Qwest phone service established, different story. Seems that I was too far away from their DSL hub.
So, I called our cable monopoly, Cox Communications. Since I've never owned a television, I had no desire for cable TV. I only needed Internet.
Three Cox techs came out and started what I thought was Internet-only service.
Then, a couple of years ago, I got a letter from Cox. Seems that my TV rates were going up. TV? Me? I didn't get it.
I'd never ordered TV from Cox. And they'd never created any sort of physical connection between their system and a television inside my house.
So, I took them to the Arizona Attorney General's Office of Consumer Affairs and got a credit on my bill.
Moral of my story: Even if you're just getting high-speed Internet from the cable companies, make sure that you really are. These companies are notorious for slipping phantom fees into their bills. Which means that we have to watch them like a shoplifter.
As has frequently happened - they do not supply the bandwidth needed to truly satisfy all the capacity that they have sold in a given neighborhood. The result is that you are then slowed a good bit. You can 'upgrade' if you want - but be advised - you will still be competing with everyone else who also upgrades.
Yes - when the lower tiered people get slowed - it is in part because they are reserving more for the higher paying - but then what happens when too many high tiers are on one switch?
This has been a long, long standing problem with all Cable systems.
If DSL runs out to your area (it has distance limitations) - you will be far more likely to get what you are paying for AND DSL is generally more secure, too - for obvious reasons, if you understand addressing.
Then there is the problem of edging fees up for website owners until they cannot afford to launch unless they are deep pocketed - very anti-innovation. The reason is that each company between someone requesting a page you may have for your company or charity and the requesting person will want some payola for allowing your page to cross their territory. This will almost always involve more than one carrier.
To add salt to the wound - also know that in the course of getting things further deregulated on a state by state basis - each of the big companies made promises regarding the updating of technology - but in only rare instances - did they keep the promises. In short they have bilked the American taxpayer for over 320 billion in revenues over the last 16 years or so - while delivering almost nothing.
So don't buy it when they talk about money - they have taken it and ran
see http://www.newnetworks.com/FCCCITIbroadband.htm for comprehensive details about this ongoing scam.
Congress has rarely passed laws that benefit the population, almost always the Corporations have gained more control. Look at the middle class today.......what's left of it.
ATT is presently deploying Uverse and once that is available to my house I'm going to switch over for tv and save money.
My cellular options are ATT, Verizon, T-mobile, Sprint, Clear , Cricket, and probably a few more I can't think of off the top of my head.
Then there are the retailers like Vonage. I have all the choices in the world .
Let's say you want to use Comcast for internet, but Uverse for TV, and Vonage for phone. There's nothing to stop Comcast from degrading your internet service because you chose to go to their competitors for TV and phone. You do technically have lots of choices, but if all your services depend on the internet, and your ISP decides to slow your speed unless you bundle with them, then you really only have one choice.
They want to make money and don't want to win a congeniality contest.
I do not think they care what bandwidth it is, a torrent or a Netflix high-definition movie stream, they want to limit the needs to expand the network. Fee's to tier providers (the networks you're provider uses to cross the country and the globe) and expanding their network cost more money (but it is really cheap), and with the profit margins demanded by investors these days, some might not blame them.
This is a situation that requires a public private partnership.
The public invests, interested resellers invest, and in return they get access to customers and we get access to massive bandwidth.
The trick is, there must be at least 5 and preferably 7 competitors in each region, all with equal access to compete for subscribers. This is far from what we have now.
Bandwidth prices will increase dramatically if the trend toward bandwidth stagnation continues. We already pay double for less than half of almost every wired country in the world, we need not make it worse.
The American taxpayer has just given out tens of Billions of dollars to telecommunications companies, and equal treatment of bandwidth, from whatever the source and a competitive business is the least the industry can do.