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What is the simple key to passing bipartisan net neutrality and online privacy legislation?

Put consumer interests first with a new Federal consumer-centric law, not last like today, where technology interests come first, in technology-centric law which minimizes responsibility to safeguard consumers’ choices, privacy, and security.

The tell for whether someone supports bipartisan Internet legislation to protect consumers and level the playing field or not, is whether they are focused on what is best overall for the online consumer or focused on special treatment for one technology over another. It is that simple.

Only people vote, bleed, or care. Technologies do not.

The Bipartisan Case

The origin of the term “Internet” is “inter-networking” per Robert Khan, co-inventor of TCP/IP, the Internet protocol that essentially enables and thus defines which networks are interoperable parts of the Internet’s overall network of networks, which now effectively encompasses ISPs, Internet services, Intenet platforms, cloud providers, apps, and others.  

It is a matter of when, not if, Congress will pass national privacy and data protection law for the 21^st century.

It’s inevitable, because the U.S. privacy policy to date is operating as predictably as a pendulum swinging. Consider the evident big picture, pendulum dynamic at work here.

In 2003, Professor Tim Wu coined the term “net neutrality.”

Fifteen years later, it’s now time for a network reality check. That’s because net neutrality is back in the news with a quixotic Senate vote that proposes what a majority of the House and the FCC, and the President all oppose, all while rejecting real legislative proposals to enshrine net neutrality consumer protections permanently into law.   

How is network reality today different from 2003?

When net neutrality was conceived in 2003, Amazon was a company with ~$5b in revenues, Google just started generating revenues, and Facebook didn’t exist. Now America’s largest network company by annualized revenues is Amazon at $193b, not AT&T, at $160b.

The annualized revenues of the three largest edge-networks, Amazon, Google, and Facebook will likely surpass the collective revenues of the three largest ISP networks, AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast, sometime this fall.

If current revenue growth rates continue, expect Amazon, Google, and Facebook’s collective revenues to be twice that of AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast in less than three years.

That is network reality.

A nation divided cannot stand.

America’s Internet policy is so badly divided that America’s national security struggles to stand firm.

The U.S. Government’s outdated, out of control, Internet policy dictates digital division and delivers digital disunion and disorder.

Abraham Lincoln’s most famous speech shared the timeless truth and wisdom that “a house divided against itself cannot stand” when he stood up for what was, and is, right – freedom and equality for all people, not just for the favored.  

Much more than most appreciate, U.S. Internet policy has de facto partitioned America legally into separate online and offline worlds. That may have made sense in the 1990’s when the Internet was nascent, but now when the Internet is pervasively everywhere we live, work, and play, it’s not only “disruptive,” but divisive and destructive too.

SUMMARY

What could possibly go wrong with a nationalized, dual-use, military-civilian, secure 5G wireless network to centralize all military and civilian U.S. transportation traffic control and management with Alphabet-Google as the only commercial wireless ISP “financing/anchor tenant?” Way too much.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, January 29, 2018, Contact: Scott Cleland 703-217-2407

The Primary Beneficiaries of America Nationalizing a 5G Wireless Information Highway Would Be: Google’s Monopoly Information Access, Android Mobile Operating System, & Google Maps/Waze; and SoftBank’s ~$60b holdings in China’s Alibaba & $100b Telecom/Tech Venture Fund

WASHINGTON D.C. – The following may be attributed to Scott Cleland, Chairman of NetCompetition:

“An analysis of the Axios-reported memo proposing to build a nationalized 5G wireless network makes it clear that Alphabet-Google and SoftBank are the moving force behind it. The proposal obviously would benefit their interests first and foremost and it goes in the exact direction they have lobbied for over the last several years.”

“It is especially ironic and troubling that Softbank and Alphabet-Google are the apparent impetus behind this proposal for a secure wireless transportation network to compete with China and be secure from Chinese snooping.

Internet users are the forgotten consumers.  

They have been forgotten for over twenty years because America’s Internet policy has been tech-first-consumer-last. 

Hiding in plain sight, U.S. Internet policy prioritizes what’s best for technologies and Internet companies over what’s best for people, because at core it assumed in 1996 and 1998 that whatever is good for Internet technologies and companies is good for Internet consumers.

For many years that appeared to be largely true. However, the cascading revelations this past year -- big societal, economic, and political problems caused by Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, etc. -- prove that core U.S. Internet policy assumption false.

Let’s contrast the Government’s protection of Internet companies with its protection of Internet consumers.

SUMMARY:

In 2015, the FCC’s Title II Open Internet broadband order was predicated on a demonstrably false central competitive premise: that the Internet’s edge was competitive while the broadband Internet core was not competitive. The facts prove the opposite.

The 2015 FCC’s competition premise is myth.

While there is plenty of information in the record, and in the July 17 comments, that broadband is  competitive, until now there has been little data and research on the overall competitiveness of the Internet edge providers, save for NetCompetition’s July 17^th comments that showed how concentrated the Internet edge is using the Internet Association as a proxy.

To further rebut comments that were predicated on the demonstrably false central premise that the Internet’s edge is competitive, NetCompetition submits additional Internet competition research below.

July 17, 2017

FCC Restoring Internet Freedom WC No. 17-108

Submission by Scott Cleland, Chairman, NetCompetition (An e-forum supported by broadband interests.)

Debunking Edge Competition Premises in FCC 2015 Title II Broadband Order – FCC Comments

In 2015, the FCC’s Title II Open Internet broadband order implicitly was based on three core competitive premises about “edge” competition and competitors, that are demonstrably false, which undermines the factual legitimacy and legal justification of the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet order, and which supports the current FCC’s Restoring Internet Freedom NPRM to overturn it.

Summary: The 2015 FCC’s three demonstrably false core competitive premises are:

Ironically, the world’s leading winner-take-all Internet platforms -- Google, Amazon, and Facebook -- are the leading voices of the July 12th “Internet-wide Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality.” They want to pressure the U.S. FCC to maximally regulate ISPs as Title II telephone utilities, even though they don’t believe in operating neutral networks themselves.

Even more ironic, is this 1 min. Google-YouTube video -- by the Internet Association, “the unified voice of the Internet economy.” It defines net neutrality and what it wants the FCC to ban ISPs from doing. However, those banned behaviors closely describe how Google, Facebook and Amazon often operate. Awkward.

In yet another video supporting this Day of Action, three U.S. Senators video message said: “We believe the Internet is the extraordinary opportunity that gives everybody in America the chance to get ahead. We have to make sure it is not controlled by a handful of powerful corporations.”

This piece has two tasks.