FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, March 23, 2017, Contact: Scott Cleland 703-217-2407
Public Knowledge/Big Internet Oppose FCC Business Data Services Deregulation Because They Want More Unnecessary Title II Utility, Price Regulated Resale Subsidies Instead of Facilities-Based Competition & New Fiber and Fixed Wireless/5G Broadband Investment
WASHINGTON D.C. – The following may be attributed to Scott Cleland, Chairman of NetCompetition:
“This Thursday, the FCC will vote on its Business Data Services Order and is expected to finally deregulate broadband prices for the business market, a decade after the FCC fully deregulated broadband prices for the consumer market. Thus, this FCC BDS order is all about the future of facilities-based broadband competition and transitioning away from Title II, price-regulation-dependent, resale competition.”
“Kudos to Chairman Pai and Commissioner O’Rielly’s vision for promoting more facilities-based broadband competition to replace slow, pre-1996, legacy copper facilities with modern fiber optic or gigabit fixed wireless facilities, to promote infrastructure investment, economic growth and job creation.”
“Twenty years after the 1996 Telecom Act promoted competition over regulation, and now that the cost of deploying gigabit speed, fixed wireless, broadband facilities over the last 500 to 2000 feet has fallen precipitously in the last few years, it is high time that for-profit corporations providing broadband data services to the business market, get off the FCC price regulation dole and individually, or as a private consortia, build their own competitive broadband facilities.”
“It is outrageous that INCOMPASS, the trade association of business data services providers, that represents the most valuable companies in America -- Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Netflix -- companies collectively worth $2 trillion, and which have $260 billion in cash, have the unmitigated gall to make a de facto, alms for the giga-rich plea, for the FCC to continue FCC price regulation subsidies for corporate broadband slow lanes, to go along with their existing Title II net neutrality, regulated price of zero for their lion’s share consumption of America’s Internet downstream bandwidth for video streaming.”
“Souee! Souee! Calling INCOMPASS bandwidth hogs!”
NETCompetition.org is a pro-competition e-forum representing broadband interests.
Scott Cleland served as Deputy U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy in the George H. W. Bush Administration.
