Apparently the state of Tennessee really doesn’t want its citizens to have good, competitive broadband. While the FCC’s net neutrality rules keep getting all the attention, as we’ve discussed, in the long run it may be a bigger deal that the FCC (the same day it released the net neutrality rules) also started dismantling protectionist state laws that block municipal broadband. Those laws — almost all of which were written directly by big broadband players afraid of competition — make it close to impossible for local municipalities to decide that they’re going to set up true competitors. The FCC pre-empted two such state laws, including in Tennessee, where one super successful municipal broadband project, in Chattanooga, wanted to expand to other nearby places. However, Tennessee’s law blocked this.
We already noted that Rep. Marsha Blackburn was trying to pass legislation that would block the FCC’s efforts here, but the state of Tennessee has taken it up a notch and sued the FCC over the rules. You will notice that the arguments used by the state of Tennessee are almost verbatim identical to the lawsuits we wrote about yesterday challenging the FCC’s net neutrality rules:
The State of Tennessee, as a sovereign and a party to the proceeding below, is aggrieved and seeks relief on the grounds that the Order: (1) is contrary to the United States Constitution; (2) is in excess of the Commission’s authority; (3) is arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion within the meaning of the Administrative Procedure Act; and (4) is otherwise contrary to law.
Yes, this is almost word-for-word identical to the claims made about the net neutrality rules and is basically the standard language to challenge any FCC ruling.
But here’s the larger question: if you’re a resident of Tennessee who likes having fast, affordable, competitive broadband, are you happy about your tax dollars being used to sue the FCC in an effort to uphold a law written by the big broadband players, focused on blocking such competition? It seems like the current Tennessee Attorney General, Herbert Slatery, has painted a giant target on his back for a challenger who actually wants to support the public in Tennessee.
Tag: FCC
AT&T’s Cozy NSA Ties Brought Up In Attempt To Scuttle DirecTV Merger
Before there was Edward Snowden, there was of course the notably less celebrated Mark Klein. As most of you probably recall, Klein, a 22-year AT&T employee, became a whistleblower after hehighlighted how AT&T was effectively using fiber splits to give the NSA duplicate access to every shred of data that touched AT&T’s network. Of course, once it was discovered that AT&T was breaking the law, the government decided to just change the law, ignore Klein’s testimony, and give all phone companies retroactive immunity. It really wasn’t until Snowden that the majority of the tech press took Klein’s warnings seriously.
AT&T’s been loyally “patriotic” ever since, often giving the government advice on how to skirt the lawor at times even acting as intelligence analysts. Business repercussions for AT&T have been minimal at best; in fact, you’ll recall that Qwest (now CenturyLink) claimed repeatedly that government cooperation was rewarded with lucrative contracts, while refusal to participate in government programs was punished. In fact, the only snag AT&T’s seen in the years since was to have its European expansion plans thwarted, purportedly by regulators uncomfortable with the carrier’s cozy NSA ties (AT&T instead simply expanded into Mexico).
Fast forward a few years and The Hill is now claiming that AT&T’s relationship with the NSA could harm the company’s $48 billion attempt to acquire DirecTV. This claim is apparently based on the fact that a coalition of AT&T business partners, called the Minority Cellular Partners Coalition, is warning the FCC in a letter that AT&T’s enthusiastic voluntary cooperation with the NSA shows the company’s total disregard for consumer privacy.
“(Despite immunity) the Commission is still obliged to execute and enforce the provisions of § 229 of the Act, see 47 U.S.C. § 151, and it is still empowered to conduct an investigation to insure that AT&T complies with the requirements of CALEA. See id. § 229(c). And the Commission is obliged to determine whether AT&T is qualified to obtain DIRECTV’s licenses in light of its egregious violations of CALEA. This is particularly true given AT&T’s continued and ongoing pattern of misconduct. Accordingly, the Commission should investigate AT&T’s complicity in the PSP to determine whether AT&T engaged in unlawful conduct that abridged the privacy interests of telecommunications consumers on a vast scale and, if so, whether AT&T is qualified to obtain DIRECTV’s licenses.”
Of course, that’s simply not happening. While the NSA cooperation can be used as a broader example of AT&T’s character (like the repeatedly nonsensical claims the company makes when it wants a merger approved, or how AT&T tries to charge its broadband customers extra for no deep packet inspection), it’s incredibly unlikely that the same government that granted AT&T’s immunity will turn around and sign off on using AT&T’s behavior to squash a merger. If the merger is blocked, it will be due to more practical considerations — like the fact that DirecTV is a direct competitor to AT&T and eliminating them would lessen competition in the pay TV space. When it comes to AT&T’s relationship with the NSA, it’s pretty clear by now that these particular chickens may never come home to roost.
Blackburn Bill Attempts To Gut New Net Neutrality Rules. You Know, For Freedom
During the last election cycle, Representative Marsha Blackburn received $15,000 from a Verizon PAC, $25,000 from an AT&T PAC, $20,000 from a Comcast PAC, and $20,000 from the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Surely that funding is only coincidentally related to Blackburn’s recent decision to rush to the defense of awful state protectionist law written by the likes of AT&T and Comcast, preventing towns and cities from doing absolutely anything about their local lack of broadband competition.
That money surely is also only tangentially related to the fact that Blackburn has also just introduced the “Internet Freedom Act” (pdf), aimed at gutting the FCC’s recently unveiled Title II-based net neutrality rules and prohibiting the agency from trying to make new ones. Whereas most of us thought net neutrality is about protecting consumers and smaller competitors from the incumbent ISP stranglehold over the last mile, Blackburn’s website informs readers that net neutrality rules harm innovators, jobs, and err — freedom:
The Cartoonist Has No Idea How Net Neutrality Works
Earlier this week, the A Good Cartoon tumblr first posted a bunch of ridiculous and misleadingpolitical cartoons about net neutrality that showed zero understanding of net neutrality. And then the person behind the site remade many of those cartoons, but replaced the words in them with “the cartoonist has no idea how net neutrality works!” For reasons unknown, the original Tumblr post that had all of them has been taken down, but many of the images are still viewable via John Hodgman’s blog, and they’re worth checking out. Here are just a few with some additional commentary (because how can I not provide some commentary…)
Right, so actually, the rules are designed to do the exact opposite of the image above. They’re designed to make sure that the big broadband access players can’t delay things and have to deliver your content faster. The idea that the FCC will be stepping between the content and people who want to see it is completely false.
I don’t even know what the original cartoonist was trying to say here, because it doesn’t even make the slightest bit of sense. The text in the original cartoon was “time’s up, next!” which makes even less sense than the first cartoon. The whole point of the new rules is to prevent broadband providers from putting these types of controls on your internet usage.
Sensing a pattern yet? All of these cartoons are pretending that the new rules insert the FCC between you and the internet. And all of them pretend that the FCC is going to do what the broadband providers themselves have said they want to do — which these rules are designed to prevent. So, yes, the cartoonist has no idea how net neutrality works.
At least this one doesn’t go for the easy (but wrong) joke pretending that the FCC is now watching what you do online. Instead, it’s claiming that there’s no reason for the FCC to “fix” anything because it’s “not broken.” But that’s only true if you ignore the attempts to break neutrality along with how the broadband providers purposely made your Netflix slow in order to get the company to pay its tolls. And, of course, it also means having to ignore what the broadband providers have been saying themselves for a decade now about how they want to double and triple charge internet services to reach end users. If you pretend all of that isn’t true, then maybe the original cartoon makes sense. But, all of it is true, so the cartoonist has no idea how net neutrality works.
FCC Approval Of Zero Rating Shows Companies Can Still Violate Neutrality Under New Rules, They Just Have To Be More Clever About It
We’ve discussed more than a few times the awful precedent set by AT&T’s Sponsored Data effort, which involves companies paying AT&T to have their service be exempt from the company’s already arbitrary usage caps. While AT&T pitches this as a wonderful boon to consumers akin to 1-800 numbers and free shipping, as VC Fred Wilson perfectly illustrated last year, it tilts the entire wireless playing field toward companies with deeper pockets that can afford to pay AT&T’s rates for cap exemption.
So how will the FCC’s new net neutrality rules impact AT&T’s plans? There’s every indication it won’t. The rules are still a few years and a few legal challenges away from becoming tangible, and in the interim, the FCC is telling companies that none of the zero rated efforts currently in play should be impacted. Meanwhile, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Norway, Chile and now Canada all realize the threat posed by zero rated apps and have passed net neutrality rules that outlaw zero rating. The FCC, in contrast, has consistently implied it sees zero rating as “creative” pricing.
That’s given AT&T the justifiable confidence to sally forth with its dangerous precedent. After all, injecting a gatekeeper like AT&T (with a generation of documented anti-competitive abuses under its belt) right into the middle of the wireless app ecosystem won’t hurt anyone, and has nothing whatsoever to do with net neutrality.
FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai Is Leading An Incoherent, Facts-Optional Last Minute War On Net Neutrality…For The American People
Over the last few months we’ve discussed how FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai has been waging a one man war on net neutrality and Title II using what can only be described as an increasingly aggressive barrage of total nonsense. Back in January Pai tried to claim that Netflix was a horrible neutrality hypocrite because the company uses relatively ordinary content delivery networks. Earlier this month Pai one-upped himself by trying to claim that meaningful neutrality consumer protections would encourage countries like Iran and North Korea to censor the Internet.
Now on the surface, it appears that Pai just doesn’t understand technology very well. Of course, once you understand that he was once a regulatory lawyer for Verizon, you realize he’s simply dressing broadband duopoly profit protection up as some kind of deeper, meaningful ethos. As such, lamenting that Title II is “Obamacare for the Internet,” is just political theater designed to rile up the base to the benefit of the broadband industry.
With net neutrality set for a vote this week, Pai has accelerated his master plan to make the largest number of inaccurate net neutrality statements in the shortest amount of time possible. For example, Pai co-wrote an editorial in the Chicago Tribune last week that tries to use Obamacare fears to insist Americans will lose the right to choose their own wireless plans if Title II based rules come to pass:
“If you like your wireless plan, you should be able to keep it. But new federal regulations may take away your freedom to choose the best broadband plan for you. It’s all part of the federal government’s 332-page plan to regulate the Internet like a public utility…take T-Mobile’s Music Freedom program, which the Internet conduct rule puts on the chopping block. The “Un-carrier” allows consumers to stream as much online music as they want without charging it against their monthly data allowance.”
FCC’s Ajit Pai: By Making Sure The Internet Is Open And Free… It Will Inspire North Korea And Cuba To Censor
I should note, upfront, that I’ve had the chance to meet FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai a couple of times, and always found him to be interesting and knowledgeable, as well as engaged on important issues. Yet, for whatever reason, when it comes to net neutrality issues, the former Verizon lawyer (clue number 1) seems to have gone off the deep end, tossed all logic and intellectual honesty out the window, in an effort to just lash out angrily with whatever he’s got. We’ve talked about his incoherent attack on Netflix and his sudden and newfound love of transparency (never noted before…).
But his latest move just strips whatever credibility he may have had on the subject completely away. He’s insisting that the FCC’s new net neutrality rules (which he opposes) will inspire North Korea and Iran to further control and censor the internet (which they already control and heavily censor). And he’s not arguing this in a “they hate us for our freedom” way, but he’s actively lying and claiming that this move — a move to guarantee openness and not censorship online — will give the North Korean and Iranian governments the political cover to censor the internet. Let’s be frank, Pai’s statements are complete nonsense.
“If in the United States we adopt regulations that assert more government control over how the Internet operates … it becomes a lot more difficult for us to go on the international stage and tell governments: ‘Look, we want you to keep your hands off the internet,’” he said.
“Even if the ideas aren’t completely identical, you can appreciate the optical difficult in trying to make that case,” he added.
FCC chair refuses to make net neutrality rules public before approval
FCC chair Tom Wheeler has refused to release the net neutrality rules that the regulator will vote on later this month.
The decision whether to make a document public before it faces formal approval rests with the FCC chair but, despite requests from Congress and two of his own commissioners, Wheeler has refused to do so, leaving the public in the dark over what the regulator will actually approve on 26 February.
Citing “decades of precedent,” Wheeler told the chairs of Congress’ technology committees [PDF] that the FCC works along the same lines as appeal courts and the Supreme Court and commissioners are given the text three weeks before a vote is expected in order to “confer privately, share their views and review drafts confidentially, and then issue their public decision,” claiming “this is commonplace for administrative agencies.”
However, given the extraordinary public interest in the rules – highlighted by the four million public comments received on the topic – not to mention the fact that two of his four commissioners have formally asked Wheeler to make the document public, the decision to keep the document under wraps is raising eyebrows – and hackles.
Commissioner Pai this morning put out a statement complaining about the decision not to release information and highlighting six concerns he has with the proposed plan. “I am disappointed that the plan will not be released publicly,” he noted.