I participated in a panel about the “Wired Home and Wireless Policy” at the Broadband Breakfast Club this morning. The panel was aimed at the impact of convergence on communications policy, though it touched on a number of current policy issues, including the current debate about incentive auction legislation (see my separate post about the spectrum crunch here). I focused my remarks on four emerging trends that are likely to disrupt wireless regulation in 2012: convergence 2.0, cloud computing, hotspot 2.0, and small cells. Read the rest of this entry »
Posts Tagged ‘ FCC ’
Four Trends that Will Disrupt Wireless Regulation in 2012
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broadband FCC mobile spectrum wireless wireless competition
FCC’s Broadband Speed Measurements Debunk Advertised Speed Myth
Annie: Well, I should probably tell you that I’m taking the bus because I had my driver’s license revoked.
Jack: What for?
Annie: Speeding.
Speed (1994).
Yesterday the FCC released its “Measuring Broadband America” report, “the most comprehensive and rigorous assessment ever of broadband performance in the United States.” (See FCC Chairman Genachowski’s statement here.) The report debunks one of the most widely believed broadband myths with actual data.
Myth: “[C]onsumers aren’t getting the service that they are paying for.”
Fact: “DSL, cable, and fiber-to-the-home are all delivering quality service generally consistent with what they advertise.” (Chairman Genachowski’s statement.)
In fact, consumers are sometimes getting service that is faster than that for which they are paying even when measured during periods of peak usage. The report found that, on average during peak periods, fiber-to-the-home services delivered 114% of advertised speeds (DSL-based services delivered 82% and cable delivered 93% of advertised speeds).
It’s refreshing to see an FCC report based on actual data that sets the record straight.
The FCC Refuses to Analyze Wireless Competition – Again
The FCC released its 15th Mobile Wireless Competition Report yesterday (available here), and for the second straight year, the FCC ignored its congressional mandate and refused to make a finding regarding competition in the wireless market. (See my CNET op-ed here discussing last year’s report.) This isn’t a surprise, but that makes it no less disconcerting. Politico’s Morning Tech report noted Representative Blackburn’s concerns with the FCC’s failure to find, well, anything at all. In a statement (not yet on her website), Representative Blackburn said that, with the FCC’s 15th Report, “bureaucrats are pouring the foundation to cement more big government plans and more Washington control over one of the few sectors of our economy that is actually creating jobs.”
Unfortunately, Representative Blackburn is right. As I’ve noted before, the only sensible explanation for the FCC’s failure to fulfill its congressional responsibility is the FCC’s “desire to increase its regulation of the mobile wireless industry.” There is no other sensible explanation for an expert agency’s declaration that, in an area of its core expertise, “the complexity of the various inter-related segments and services within the mobile wireless ecosystem” (15th Report at paragraph 2) are too great for the FCC to make a finding.
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FCC wireless competition
I Say Tomato and You Say Tomato, but We Don’t Mean the Same Thing
I blogged yesterday about the FCC’s new conclusion in its seventh 706 report that “availability” and “deployment” mean “adoption” in addition to physical access to the Internet. But did anyone notice that the FCC’s National Broadband Plan used the word “availability” as the header for its section discussing physical deployment and the words “adoption and utilization” as the header for its section discussing, well, “adoption”?
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) (pdf available here) required the FCC to develop a National Broadband Plan that contained “an evaluation of the status of deployment of broadband service,” which the FCC thought was synonymous with “availability” and did not include “adoption.” (Emphasis added.) But now the FCC has decided that the words “availability” and “deployment” do include “adoption” as used in Section 706. Did Congress intend that “deployment” mean something different in Section 706 than in the ARRA? What do you think?
The FCC’s New Interpretation of Section 706(b) Opens a Pandora’s Box of Internet Regulation
D.A. Jack McCoy: “I hear Pandora’s box slowly creaking open.” Law and Order (1990)
Last Friday the FCC released its Seventh Report on the availability of broadband capability to Americans. (A pdf of the report is available here.) For the second time the FCC found “that broadband is not being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion to all Americans.” (Report at ¶ 1.)
This is not surprising. As I’ve noted before, the FCC is now using its reports to pursue a more regulatory agenda. The FCC’s rationale, however, is very surprising. Its new interpretation of Section 706 is so broad it empowers the FCC to regulate virtually every aspect of broadband and the Internet.
Its new interpretation of Section 706 is so broad it empowers the FCC to regulate virtually every aspect of broadband and the Internet.
The relevant statute (section 706(b)) requires the FCC to determine whether broadband is being “deployed” to all Americans in reasonable and timely fashion. The FCC complied with that statutory mandate by analyzing actual deployment. The FCC concluded that, because broadband is not currently deployed to all Americans and there may be areas where there is no commercial business case to do so, broadband is not being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion to all Americans.
The FCC should have stopped there. Whether or not one agrees with the FCC’s conclusion, the FCC had complied with its statutory duty based solely on the extent of actual broadband deployment. There was nothing more the FCC was required to do, and more importantly, nothing more it should do.
But the FCC did not stop there. It separately analyzed whether broadband is “available” to all Americans. Section 706(b) does say the FCC must “initiate a notice of inquiry concerning the ‘availability’ of advanced telecommunications capability to all Americans.” When this phrase is read in context, however, it’s obvious that “availability” is synonymous with “deployment.” But the FCC heard the lid of Pandora’s box creeping open and concluded that “availability” and “deployment” are broader than physical deployment.
Why would the FCC adopt such a tortured construction of an unambiguous statute? The answer is in the FCC’s analysis. The FCC’s analysis of availability focuses primarily on adoption rates, which the FCC uses as a proxy for availability (presumably because the statute doesn’t use the word “adoption”). Defining adoption rates as an issue over which the FCC has jurisdiction, rather than merely physical deployment, gives the FCC an opportunity to regulate virtually every aspect of broadband, including prices and service quality.
That opportunity derives from the last sentence of Section 706(b), which says that, if the FCC finds broadband deployment is not reasonable and timely, “it shall take immediate action to accelerate deployment of such capability by removing barriers to infrastructure investment and by promoting competition in the telecommunications market.”
There are a lot more “barriers to infrastructure investment” for the FCC to “remove” once adoption rates are read into the statute. According to the FCC, removing barriers to infrastructure investment now “requires the Commission to identify and help reduce potential obstacles to deployment, competition, and adoption.” (Emphasis added.) The FCC’s new list of barriers based on these criteria is astonishing in its scope. It includes: (1) costs and delays in building out networks and offering service; (2) low broadband service quality; (3) lack of affordability of broadband (i.e., broadband prices); (4) consumers’ lack of access to computers and other broadband devices; (5) lack of relevance of broadband for some consumers; (6) poor digital literacy; and (7) privacy concerns.
This set of issues is so broad it’s hard to see any limitation at all on the FCC’s jurisdiction over broadband. With its new interpretation of Section 706(b), the Commission has in a single stroke gone from an agency that had little to no authority over broadband to an agency that can regulate broadband in every particular. The FCC has fully lifted the lid off the Pandora’s box of Internet regulation. It’s now up to the courts or Congress to close it.