Tag: fcc

Be vewy quiet; the FCC is hunting wabbit ears

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Over the weekend, Outside the Beltway had an excellent critique of a New York Times op-ed from Helen Rubenstein, who was suddenly upset that she couldn’t siphon internet from her neighbors.  Rubenstein is a Brooklyn college professor (thankfully of writing and not ethics), and apparently feels that she should get a service for free that other suckers pay hundreds each year for; OTB rightly calls her out for her self-centered attitude.

Buried in her complaint letter to no one in particular, though, is a hint that his is more than simply an op-ed from a spoiled academic who demands everything for free:

In an ideal world, the Internet would be universally available to anyone able to receive it. Promisingly, the Federal Communications Commission in September announced that it would open up unused analog airwaves for high-speed public wireless use, which could lead to gratis hotspots spreading across cities and through many rural areas.

In 2011, there may be similar announcements to the one Rubenstein references.  The Obama FCC makes no secret that they like the idea of pushing broadcasters off the airwaves to make sure there’s more room for the internet.  Their vision of the future would keep traditional TV stations on cable, but would limit their ability to broadcast over the air.  (If you don’t use rabbit ears, you might not notice; if you do use rabbit ears, it would be time to call Comcast.)  Wireless internet providers and cable companies would win; traditional over-the-air broadcasters would lose.

The sales pitch to the consumers will likely be similar in tone to Rubenstein’s op-ed: Wouldn’t you love for the internet to be everywhere, like TV is now?

Notably, the FCC’s goal of replacing over-the-air TV signals with internet signals isn’t due to a lack of available bandwidth, but because the segments used by television is the prime segment of the broadcast spectrum (or, as a former FCC official once described it to me, the broadcasting equivalent of “beachfront property”).

This is a Washington, D.C. policy battle where a five-member panel will determine winners and losers.  Voters can expect both sides trying to drag them in – and whether or not she was recruited by the proponents of re-allocation to pen her op-ed last week, Professor Rubenstein has kicked off the fun.

(Disclosure: I previously worked at a public affairs firm that represented the National Association of Broadcasters – who, as you might expect, were and are very concerned about this issue.  I don’t work for that firm anymore and NAB is not a current client. Sure, I sympathize with them… but they haven’t paid me to do so.)

Landmark day for the internet

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The FCC will pass net neutrality regulations today.  The movement for “net neutrality” has been gaining steam in recent years, and the government wants to ensure that no entity will be able to censor what internet users can access:

When asked if that made it a crime for Assange, Biden said Assange could be proven to have violated the law when it turned out he encouraged or helped Bradley Manning, U.S. intelligence analysts believed it was behind the leaking of the document of the United States Embassy.

I’m sorry, my mistake: that’s Vice President Joe Biden describing how the US Government is going to drop the hammer on Julian Assange for the stuff he put up on the internet.  That’s apparently completely unrelated.

 

 

The Politics of Public Comments

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The White House’s Open Government Initiative – President Barack Obama’s directive to for more transparency and public involvement in the often-arcane machinations of the Executive Branch – celebrates its first birthday today. The initiative’s first year has been largely overshadowed by legislative fights, but the real test will come in 2011 – when the Obama Administration likely becomes the Ministry of Regulation.

The President faces a split Congress in 2011, and lawmaking wasn’t all that easy when he had strong majorities in both Houses. Beyond that, he faces the dual risks of losing his far-left base and alienating the middle by allowing the Republicans to play some offense with their House majority. Of course, any revolutionary bill passed by a Republican House will be shot down by the Democratic Senate – and then the Democrats become the sideline-sitting, Slurpee-sipping, “Party of No” just in time for the 2012 election – freeing them up to hand down edicts on everything from internet regulation to carbon emissions.

What is a President to do?

The answer lies in the alphabet soup of agencies throughout the Executive branch, including such classics as the FCC, the FTC, the SEC, and everyone’s favorite, the EPA. Each has regulatory authority delegated from Congress. And, unlike the President’s allies in Congress, bureaucrats will not have to face voters in 2012.

Regulatory agencies are not immune to public input, but they sure can make it a challenge.

For instance, anyone who has been involved in a land use issue which included federal oversight knows the mass of documents required. Each document (along with draft, final, and supplemental versions) must have its own public comment period, where citizens can submit their thoughts.

In theory, that should mean more avenues for input; in practice it is confusing and redundant. Making the process more complex is the fact that each agency may count comments differently; a regulator has the discretion to decide if a comment should be dismissed for being immaterial. Individual bureaucrats have tremendous interpretive power over the public input that crosses their desk.

Is the grassroots wave against big government – and the nascent GOP House majority they produced – already backed into a corner? Far from it.

The American people haven’t fallen back in love with Washington quite yet, so the electorate is likely to listen to the case against shadow laws via bureaucracy. Grassroots activists should participate in comment periods whenever they can – and make sure elected policymakers get a copy of the same letter or message that went to the regulators. (It isn’t as much fun as a protest or an angry phone call to your local Congressional office, but it’s still important.)

House Republicans can and will schedule oversight hearings. These hearings should include scrutiny over public participation opportunities Members of Congress should hold regulators accountable for providing opportunities for public access to the process – and for being receptive to the will of the people.

The Administration, which so dearly values open government, will be happy to comply – right?

Cross-posted at Pundit League.

Behold, your new internet!

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Google and Verizon have an idea of what the open internet of the future might look like, and today announced a policy proposal that the FCC – and eventually Congress – may take into consideration as they wade through these issues.

Leaving aside the meat of their proposal for a second, the deal is a good financial move.  Internet carriers and internet services figure to have different opinions, and those entities are already spending a lot of money in Washington.  By agreeing on something now, these companies could save millions in lobbying and grassroots campaigns later.

But beyond the strategy is the actual proposal, and there are two items which stand out.  First, the proposal only applies to wireline internet carriers – the people who plug the internet into your house, also typically known as your cable company.  Verizon’s FiOS service is also under that plan, but unlike those carriers, Verizon also has mobile access points to the internet through Android smartphones.

The second is that, while the proposal does call for “transparency” among internet service providers, it makes no such call for transparency or “search neutrality” from the other companies that serve as gatekeepers – notably, Google and Facebook, the companies which provide the lenses through which you see the internet.

The result is a plan which does choose some losers, but which allow its proponents to maintain their business practices.  So the deal is a good move in more ways than simply keeping lobbying costs down, if you’re Google or Verizon.

Al Franken’s comical take on net neutrality

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

If you thought Al Franken would give up the laughs just because he sued his way into the Senate, think again.  The SNL alum has some of his best writing since the Stuart Smalley movie up on CNN.com, which gave him a platform to discuss internet regulation:

“Net neutrality” sounds arcane, but it’s fundamental to free speech. The internet today is an open marketplace. If you have a product, you can sell it. If you have an opinion, you can blog about it. If you have an idea, you can share it with the world.

And no matter who you are — a corporation selling a new widget, a senator making a political argument or just a Minnesotan sharing a funny cat video — you have equal access to that marketplace.

An e-mail from your mom comes in just as fast as a bill notification from your bank. You’re reading this op-ed online; it’ll load just as fast as a blog post criticizing it. That’s what we mean by net neutrality.

So here’s the internet we have: a free and open landscape where the merit of ideas matters more than how much money you have.  So we want to oppose net neutrality legislation and regulations that would change that landscape, right?

Apparently, not in Al Franken’s world.  Franken likens the evolution of telecommunications companies to his work on network television, and the media consolidation that went on in that medium.

Back in the 1990s, Congress rescinded rules that prevented television networks from owning their own programming. Network executives swore in congressional hearings that they wouldn’t give their own programming preferred access to the airwaves. They vowed access to the airwaves would be determined only by the quality of the shows.

I was working at NBC back then, and I didn’t buy that line one bit. Sure enough, within a couple of years, NBC was the largest supplier of its own prime-time programming.

There are two rebuttals to this.  First, networks buy programming from other providers all the time.  In fact, one of the biggest hits NBC had this decade, Scrubs, was produced by Disney ABC.  The second point is… well, how is that all-Universal-produced prime time lineup working out for NBC right now?

Today, if you’re an independent producer, it’s nearly impossible to get a show on the air unless the network owns at least a piece of it.

True, but has getting a show “on the air” ever been less relevant for success?  An enterprising content producer wouldn’t get the same audience online that he or she might get on a broadcast or cable network, but they aren’t being shut out of the media landscape.  If that’s the yardstick for success, wouldn’t we have to say the internet as it is works just fine?

Franken starts to make an analogy between internet services providers and cable companies – which is, incidentally, the argument on net neutrality’s side that makes the most sense.   But that assumes the market stays static – that is, that everyone continues to have a wire coming into their house, hooked up to their desktop computer, delivering the internet for the whole family to gather around.

But that isn’t where internet consumption is going.

At the risk of using myself as an example let me use myself as an example: in the morning, I usually check work and personal email on my Blackberry before rolling out of bed.  I check my home computer to see if the Yankees won the night before.  At work, I check sites like Politico routinely, and if an issue I’m working on is about to come up for a Congressional vote I might dial up CSPAN and watch online.  After work, I might go over to Starbucks with the laptop to work on a post or answer emails, using their WiFi.  Count ’em up – that’s four internet providers in a single day.  If I was traveling, there might be more connections – airports, hotels, even planes.   I dare you to try to keep content away from me.

The internet is not a utility like cable, it’s a communications infrastructure.  The providers can’t afford to simply keep content from you, because you can figure it out and change easier than you can if, for example, Comcast refuses to put the NFL Network on a basic cable tier.

Regulating the internet like telephones, or cable, or even broadcast radio and television doesn’t work because those are different technologies and consumed differently.  But don’t blame Franken’s lack of insight on the fact that he made his bones in old-school broadcast network television.  After all, he’s been trying to appeal to net neutrality cheerleader Google to wire Duluth for broadband.  Maybe he’s just trying to scratch their back in hopes they will return the favor later on.

“Who wants Google in Minnesota? Me, Al Franken.”

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 2 Comments

Sen. Al Franken is pushing for Google to come to Duluth, Minnesota and wire the whole place for internet.  It’s just one of many examples of cities begging Google to come and save them from choppy YouTube videos.

As the FCC debates broadband expansion plans that are beginning to sound like entitlement programs, Google is showing that acting in their own self-interest can have a public benefit:

Google makes its money connecting people with data and showing them ads along the way. Anything that increases the number of people on the internet and the amount of data they seek is good for the company. On most ISPs, YouTube videos can stutter or stop due to low connection speeds, even from “high-speed” providers. One way or another, Google seeks to quicken the net by connecting cities to high-speed fiber optic lines that transmit data with modulated light (updated) rather than the wire-based electrons employed by most ISPs (fiber-optic Verizon Fios [sic] excepted).

That said, these municipalities should remain vigilant.  No matter how free the broadband is, there are legitimate concerns about Google’s privacy record.