Verizon

The American Consumer Institute did some more great work on the importance and impact of broadband. Kudos!

• I recommend you take a look at their eye-opening new study: "Broadband Services: Economic and Environmental benefits." 
• The premise is that promoting broadband is smart national policy because of the tremendous cumulative productivity and energy savings that more broadband use enables.

The summary table on page 48 encapsulates the study's findings well.

Why is net neutrality not Green?

• The current free market broadband policy is succeeding greatly in rapidly deploying broadband to all Americans and in promoting facilities-based broadband competition.
  • The FCC's latest broadband competition report that just came out shows that U.S. high speed connections grew an astounding 61% in 2006 from ~50m users to ~80m users.
• Even the serious prospect of net neutrality legislation becoming law would chill investment and discourage continuation of the broadband success that the current free market policy has generated.
  • Net neutrality is not Green because it would slow the extremely environmentally beneficial trend of increased broadband use, which creates massive national energy savings as the American Consumer institute study attests.  

I guess the World Economic Forum folks did not "get the memo" from net neutality proponents that the U.S. is supposed to be falling behind competitively because of broadband. 

The Wall Street Journal reported today that: "U.S. tops Report on Competitiveness By World Economic Forum." 

• Not only is the U.S. #1 in the world in competitiveness in the report, the U.S. also moved up in the ranking this year. 
• This World Economic Forum report tracks closely with the latest Economist Intelligence Unit's Global Digital rankings, which have the U.S. tied for second in the world.

The OECD's questionable methodology  ranks the U.S. 15th in the world on broadband; however, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell gave a great speech that systematically debunked the OECD's agenda-driven methodology and rankings.   

• Neutrality proponents often cite the OECD rankings as "proof" that net neutrality regulation is needed in order to improve American competitiveness in the world.

However, both the World Economic Forum and the Economist Intelligence Unit rank the US at or near the top of the world in competitiveness.

The unanimous passage of a new seven-year Internet Tax Moratorium, is powerful evidence of how far out of the political mainstream the net neutrality movement is.

• The fact that everyone in Congress, from the right and the left, came together and supported extending the Internet tax ban for twice as long as Congress did in the past, proves unequivocally that political consensus is possible in Congress on mainstream Internet issues.
• Moreover, the near unanimous passage of the 1996 Telecom Act by Congress was another powerful example of how the left and right could come together and agree overwhelmingly on sound Internet/communications policies like:
  • "...preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet... unfettered by Federal or state regulation;" and 
  • "To promote competition and reduce regulation in order to secure lower prices and higher quality services for America telecommunications consumers and encourage the rapid deployment of new telecommunications technologies."

Sound mainstream policies can attract near unanimity in Congress -- despite rampant partisanship. 

If net neutrality was truly a long-standing "principle" of the Internet, like its proponents have claimed, it would attract strong political consensus.

With all due respect to all the folks I read often at Business Week, I have to challenge the thinking behind Stephen Wildstrom's column in Business Week where he shares that he switched his year-long position opposing new net regulation, largely because of Verizon's admitted mistake in delaying by one-day a text messaging approval code to NARAL. 

After Verizon and the rest of the industry have handled literally billions upon billions of communications for years without significant similar incidents, one company makes an admitted mistake, takes full responsibility, immediately fixes it, changes its procedures so it won't happen again, -- and Mr Wildstrom's answer is to now throw the common-carrier regulatory book at Verizon and the whole industry? 

The recent AP story "Comcast blocks some Internet traffic" has refocused many on the real question at the core of the net neutrality debate -- "should broadband networks be managed?"

• This is a debate we are more than happy to have because it is obvious to most all who truly think about this question that broadband networks must be managed to preserve quality of service and to protect users.  

The pro-net neutrality point of view, which the AP reporter ably represented in his article, is essentially making the standard net neutrality movement case that:

I normally consider myself a big fan of Walter Mossberg's technology reviews in the Wall Street Journal, but for today I am a big critic of Mr. Mossberg's woefully uniformed and one-sided opinion piece on public policy "Free my Phone."

Obviously frustrated at the technical reality that the bandwidth availability of telecommunications devices has not kept pace with the faster growth in computer processing, Mr. Mossberg lashes out at public policy as the cause in an emotional diatribe that illogically concludes that "if the government...breaks the crippling power that the wireless carriers exert today, the free market will deliver a... happy ending."

Why does Google continue to cover-up its real political and financial relationship with Moveon.org?

• Why won't Google be "open" about this?
• What is the Google "black box" hiding?

Lets connect-some-dots chronologically of this close political and finanical Google-Moveon.org relationship.

It's important to highlight yet another official/legal repudiation of the net neutrality movement's common carrier regulation agenda.

• As reported by Comm Daily yesterday, but largely ignored by the mainstream press, the U.S. Appeals Court 3rd circuit, upheld the FCC's decision to classify DSL as a competitive "information service" and not a common carrier telecom service potentially subject to net neutrality regulations.

Why is this important?

• It was this very FCC decision made in August 2005 that net neutrality supporters made their rallying cry for new net neutrality legislation!
• This August 2005 FCC decision implemented the Supreme Court's earlier "Brand X" decision, which affirmed that cable modems were appropriately classified by the FCC as an un-regulated competitive "information service."
• In addition to applying the "Brand X" cable modem info services classification on DSL, the FCC has also applied it consistently to other functionally-equivalent broadband technologies: wireless broadband service and Broadband over power line service.

The significance of this appeals court affirmation of the legitimacy of the FCC's highly-market-successful broadband deregulation policy is that the legal precedents for maintaining broadband as an unregulated competitive service are piling up and becoming extremely difficult to reverse in the future.

While I doubt I'll ever be accused of being a supporter of Senator Hillary Clinton, I must commend her and her campaign for sound political judgement when it's due.

Reed Hundt's Frontline Wireless,  is reportedly forming a high-profile "Open Access Advisory Council" for the 700 MHz spectrum auction, which includes "net neutrality" term-coiner and celebrity Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu.

I have two pieces of unsolicited advice for Frontline's new advisory council."