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Content tagged with "regulation"
The Economist Again Blasts US Anti-Competitive Telecom Policy
This debate is loudest in America, uncoincidentally the developed market with the least competitive market in internet access. Democrats, who are in favour of net-neutrality rules, insist regulation is needed to prevent network operators discriminating in favour of their own services. A cable-TV firm that sells both broadband internet access and television services over its cables might, for example, try to block internet-based video that competes with its own television packages. Republicans, meanwhile, worry that net neutrality will be used to justify a takeover of the internet by government bureaucrats, stifling innovation. (That the internet’s origins lie in a government-funded project is quietly passed over.)They take a fairly middling approach, regarding the network neutrality rules as decent, arguing that some measure of discrimination should be allowed and could be beneficial (one wonders if they truly thought deeply about this: before YouTube, connections would have been optimized against streaming traffic and YouTube may never have succeeded). In any event, they answer their own question: the real problem in the U.S. is lack of competition among Internet service providers.
These details are important, but the noise about them only makes the omission more startling: the failure in America to tackle the underlying lack of competition in the provision of internet access. In other rich countries it would not matter if some operators blocked some sites: consumers could switch to a rival provider. That is because the big telecoms firms with wires into people’s homes have to offer access to their networks on a wholesale basis, ensuring vigorous competition between dozens of providers, with lower prices and faster connections than are available in America. Getting America’s phone and cable companies to open up their networks to others would be a lot harder for politicians than prattling on about neutrality; but it would do far more to open up the net.Unfortunately, they do not consider another remedy: local ownership that is accountable to the public.
Problem of Scale Hurts Frontier with FiOS
Frontier has been bitten by the same disadvantage many communities face when building their own networks -- little market power means having to overpay for everything. When Frontier bought millions of Verizon rural lines, it bought a few FiOS connections as well. But not enough to gain any bargaining power with channel owners. So Frontier had to raise the costs of its video services up for 46%. Lest anyone feel too sorry for Frontier, they are doing just fine. It is their customers who suffer. But it is a reminder that the issue of scale and market power are barriers to all competition, not just community networks. If we want to have real competition in this country, the Congress and the FCC need to stop ignoring the problems caused by massive players distorting the market. This unregulated market is an invitation for big players to join together and screw everyone else.
State of Telecommunications Policy in the US Today
Excellent lecture.
The Short Memory of Network Neutrality Sell-Outs
Genachowski proposed that the FCC formalize its four principles of network openness. To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled:To these, Genachowski proposed adding two more: The first would prevent Internet access providers from discriminating against particular Internet content or applications, while allowing for reasonable network management.
- to access the lawful Internet content of their choice.
- to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.
- to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network.
- to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.
FCC on Net Neutrality: More Bush than Obama
[T]he question shouldn't be whether or not consumers can now view a neutrality proposal after it was hashed out in private meetings (predominately with only the largest, wealthiest carriers), it should be: why weren't consumers absolutely integral in crafting it? AT&T has met with the FCC half a dozen times in the course of three weeks and likely knows precisely what's in this plan -- do you?We've written to FCC Commissioners to make it clear that they must not compromise on the future of the open Internet. You should too. Photo used under Creative Commons license from AdamWillis.
Barbara Van Schewick on Innovation and Architecture
Barbara Van Schewick, author of Internet Architecture and Innovation, describes the important role of openness on the Internet, what that means, and how to preserve it. Thanks to the New York Chapter of Internet Society for hosting her.
Comcast, Level 3, Peering, and a Bad Best Case Scenario
On its face, this is the sort of toll booth between residential subscribers and the content of their choice that a Net Neutrality rule is supposed to prohibit. In addition, this is exactly the sort of anticompetitive harm that opponents of Comcast’s merger with NBC-Universal have warned would happen — that Comcast would leverage its network to harm distribution of competitive video services, while raising prices on its own customers.Susan Crawford wrote a lengthier piece about Comcast, Netflix, network neutrality, set-top boxes and NBC that is well worth reading (as is just about anything she writes).
The Internet That Might Have Been
Policymakers often tell us that the Internet succeeded because of a lack of government regulation. For instance, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell recently noted that the “evolution away from government intervention has been the most important ingredient in the Internet’s success.” These views, while widely shared, happen to be inaccurate. In reality, a diverse range of federal regulations, subsidies, and nondiscrimination protections sustained the Internet’s historic growth. But what if, as many inaccurately assume, these regulations had never existed? What would today’s Internet look like in such a world? In this essay, I provide a fictional alternate history - in form of a satirical book review - to illustrate how differently the Internet might have developed in a truly privatized world. Although the essay below (beginning after this abstract) is fictional, it draws heavily upon both the regulatory history of the Internet and the policy arguments at issue in today’s leading regulatory proceedings.This article covers decisions like Carterfone, the FCC's Computer Inquires, giving control over TCP/IP to the National Science Foundation rather than AT&T, and the intentions of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. It also includes a reminder of the difference between open systems and closed systems:
One important way that open policies achieve this goal is by reducing various types of transaction costs. In open networks, new market entrants can completely avoid negotiating with companies who have “gateway control” over the network. The aspiring entrants do not have to pay—nor seek permission from—the network owners for access. Accordingly, these policies encourage vastly more experimentation and amateur “tinkering.” Closed networks, by contrast, produce relatively less innovation because they rely on centralized network owners to introduce—or at least approve—innovation before it becomes available.This is a fantastic read (really riveting telecom reading -- how often do you get that?) and a good history lesson for people who were not there to see it firsthand over the years.
Wanna Be a Wonk? Understanding Regulatory Capture
But the most common form of capture is honest and may be characterised as intellectual capture. Every regulatory agency is dependent for information on the businesses it regulates. Many of the people who run regulated companies are agreeable, committed individuals who are properly affronted by any suggestion that their activities do not serve the public good.