Qwest

Ted Hearn of Multichannel News has a dead on post 'Copps airbrushes role in FCC dereg binge" that I suggest anyone interested in the FCC's real bipartisan role in dealing with the "net neutrality" should read.

Ted's post exposes some serious political revisionism that is going on by the senior Democrat at the FCC in pandering to one of the most liberal. take-no-prisoners bloggers, Mr. Stoller of OpenLeft.

Liberal blogger Matt Stoller of OpenLeft has a post at Save the Internet that lamely tries to rewrite "the history of net neutrality" in his commentary about his interview with FCC Commisioner Michael Copps.

Please read FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell's outstanding op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today. It eviscerates the sloppy thinking and weak evidence of net neutrality/open access proponents that are trying to manufacture a national broadband problem/crisis to justify their  new Big Government "National Broadband Policy."

This op-ed is particularly timely given the current  and tightly coordinated attempts by liberal House and Senate Democrats to establish the groundwork for an abandonment of competition and free market policies in communications and replace it with a new "National Broadband Policy" which is the liberal codeword for a Big Government-managed broadband sector.

What's wrong with this picture?

• Broadband is being adopted faster nationally in the US than most any analogous product in modern U.S. history.  
• The U.S. has more facility-based broadband competition than any country in the world.
• The Bush Administration goal of making broadband available to all Americans has been achieved.
• The recent FTC report on Broadband Connectivity said:  "To date we are unaware of any significant market failure or demonstrated consumer harm from conduct by broadband providers."
• "Nearly half of all Americans have broadband Internet connections in their homes, largely because of increasing use among minorities and the poor, according to an annual survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. ... Four out of 10 African-American adults have broadband access at home, compared to 15% two years ago."

What's wrong with this picture? Nothing! 

Cesar Conda wrote a great editorial highlighting the "Broadband Triple Threat" National Review Online.

• Its an informative read and dead on.

Given the ongoing reporting of claims by net neutrality proponents that US broadband deployment is falling behind our international competitors (like the USA Today article in this link suggests), it is helpful to pull together some of the best analyses I have seen that debunk these claims by the OECD/CWA.  

For those who care to more substantively review the facts, evidence and merits of this very important public policy question, I highly recommend reading the following four sources linked in this blog, which all effectively and differently debunk the claim the US is falling behind on broadband:

Kudos to Robert Hahn and Hal Singer for their outstanding op ed in the Washington Post "Earmarked Airwaves."

• The editorial cogently presents the fork in the road that faces any major FCC decision: to follow law, which promotes competition and market-driven outcomes, or to freelance and try and "manage" competition and pick winners and losers in advance through "spectrum earmarking."
• FCC history is littered with freelance "managed competition" failures, but two are particularly ignominious and highly relevant to this 700 MHz auction:
• the illegal UNE-P scheme to rig telecom competitive outcomes following the 1996 Telecom Act; and
• the Nextwave auction scandal that kept 30 MHz of prime spectrum fallow and tied up in court for almost a decade.

At its core a spectrum auction is the quintessential type of competition. The auction law's purpose in 1993 was to use market forces, competition, to allocate the public's asset most appropriately, largely because previous FCC spectrum allocation processes were so ineffective, unfair and prone to serious abuse and graft.

• While no process is perfect, a clean competitive auction process has proven highly effective in rewarding US taxpayers and fostering a growing and highly competitive wireless marketplace that greatly benefits consumers.

This 700 MHz auction may be shaping up to be FCC Chairman Kevin Martin's legacy moment: will it be marked by promoting competition and market-based outcomes or will it be marked by standing on the auction scales to ensure the spectrum is "earmarked" to the predetermined, chosen "winner" -- in this case former Clinton-Gore FCC Chairman Reed Hundt's Frontline Wireless company.  

You gotta love how the free market works when left alone by the Government!

Just as Frontline and others are demanding that the government has to intervene in the 700 MHz auction to "create" a third broadband pipe, the free market finds another way to solve these market problems without the Government.

One of the most significant developments in the spectrum world today was not the hot air at the Senate Commerce Committee hearing, but what happened in the free market -- DirecTV and Echostar signing agreements with Clearwire to sell their WiMax broadband service.

The cover story in the Wall Street Journal today "A fight over what you  can do with your cellphone; Handset makers push free features for which carriers pay for" was obviously perfectly-timed and placed by open access/net neutrality proponents trying to influence the Senate Commerce Committee hearing today on the FCC's 700 MHz auction.

• The article offers a list of complaints for net neutrality supportive Senators to browbeat competitive wireless carriers with.

What the article ignores is the broader and essential context of this issue and debate.

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell gave an outstanding speech today at the Broadband Policy Summit in which he did the single best job I have seen totally debunking the OECD rankings that purportedly indicate the US is falling behind on broadband.

Commissioner McDowell explains with example after example -- how skewed the OECD methodology is.

• My personal favorite line in the speech was on how the OECD methodology is skewed against the US:

• "...even if every existing broadband subscriber in America had a fiber-fed 100 mbps broadband connection, we would only rank 12th."