Category Archives: Digital Life

FCC's Data Roaming Order: Trouble, Right here…

For Forbes.com this morning, I take a close look at last month’s controversial FCC order requiring facilities-based wireless carriers to negotiate data roaming agreements with other carriers.

There are business, technical, and legal reasons why the order stands on unsteady ground, which the article looks at in detail.

The order, by encouraging artificial competition in nationwide mobile broadband, could also undermine arguments against AT&T’s merger with T-Mobile USA.

How so?  If every regional, local, or rural carrier can offer their customers access to the nationwide coverage of Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint, on terms overseen for “commercial reasonableness” by the FCC, what’s the risk of combining AT&T and T-Mobile’s infrastructure.  Indeed, doing so would create stronger nationwide 3G and 4G networks for other carriers to use.  It’s actually pro-competitive, and a pragmatic solution to spectrum exhaustion.

The bigger question is why the FCC seems so determined to get into the business of regulating the Internet economy, when Congress has so clearly and consistently told them to stay out of it.

(The results of that wise foresight speak for themselves:  compare the health of digital life to the health of, say, wireline telephone and over-the-air TV broadcasters, which the FCC has long-regulated to within an inch of their lives, or less.)

With its historic client base rapidly disappearing, the FCC, like any good business, is looking for new markets and new clients.  But like Harold Hill, the flim-flam artist featured in Meredith Wilson’s classic “The Music Man,” it doesn’t know the territory.

Shut out of market for digital regulation by Congress (underscored repeatedly by the courts), the agency has no expertise in dealing with the business or technical dynamics of the Internet.  To paraphrase Wilson, the market is looking for mandolin picks, but the FCC keeps selling big trombones.

The result is trouble, my friends.  Right here.

AT&T and T-Mobile: The Antitrust Terrorists

In the rush of ink that flowed yesterday over AT&T’s announced merger with T-Mobile USA, I posted a long piece on CNET calling for calm, reasoned analysis of the deal by regulators, chiefly the Department of Justice and the FCC.

Since the details of the deal have yet to be fleshed out, it’s hard to say much about the specifics of how customers will be affected in the short or long term.  My CNET colleague Maggie Reardon, however, does an excellent job laying out both the technical and likely regulatory issues in a piece posted today from the CTIA conference.

My point was simpler.  Within hours of the deal’s announcement, and without any relevant facts, public interest groups including the Media Access Project, Public Knowledge and Free Press had already issued press releases condemning it–Public Knowledge, in fact, called the merger “unthinkable.”

That, I’m sure, was just rhetorical excess, but it does underscore a modern tendency among some advocates to react emotionally rather than rationally to any kind of asset combination.  They assume any change in the competitive landscape that reduces competition in the literal sense (fewer competitors) is by definition an antitrust violation, and conflate that with what is in fact much more complex antitrust analysis that regulators undertake.

What will be significant in this deal, I suspect, is who takes the lead.  The Department of Justice has repeatedly indicated it believes there is robust competition in mobile services, and that an accelerated push to 4G (the point of this merger) could improve competition overall by creating a viable alternative to wireline broadband.

(See the DoJ’s letter to the FCC as part of the National Broadband Plan–which also, by the way, found robust competition in wireless, though the FCC has since back-tracked in an unconvincing manner.)

The FCC, on the other hand, has gone off the rails recently in its antitrust analyses, as evidenced by the painful, drawn-out review of Comcast’s takeover of NBC Universal and the crazy quilt of largely-unrelated conditions imposed on the deal in a nearly 300-page Order.

Worse, there’s still that nagging Paragraph 78 of the Open Internet order, where a majority of Commissioners explicitly rejected the idea that traditional antitrust measures of harm to consumers would guide their application of the net neutrality rules.   (They offered no alternative criteria, even worse.)

Left to the FCC, the AT&T/T-Mobile deal will take forever to complete, and will be left shouldering regulatory pet projects for years.  Left to the Department of Justice, something more reasonable and timely might happen.

But that’s just more thinking about the “unthinkable.”  Pardon my logic.

 

Updates to the Media Page

2011 has already been filled with important developments in the technology world, and I continue to be a regular source for journalists as well as publishing frequent editorials and analyses of my own.

I’ve just posted several new items to the Media Page of my website, including articles I’ve written for CNET News.com and for Forbes, as well as video from this week’s appearance on PBS’s “Ideas in Action.”

Some highlights:

.  Coverage of policy events at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show for both CNET News.com and the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital focused on coming battles in the new Congress over the FCC’s net neutrality rules, and previewed the rest of the likely tech agenda.

. Video from Larry’s appearance at the Congressional Internet Caucus’s “State of the Net 2011.”

. A controversial essay for Slate Magazine, “Doing Nothing to Save the Internet“.

. Extensive coverage of Larry’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on the FCC’s Open Internet order.

.Stories for both CNET News.com and Forbes analyzing the FCC’s failure to complete a crucial inventory of spectrum licenses ahead of requirements to find 300-500 Mhz. of new spectrum for mobile broadband in the next five to ten years.

Congress moves forward on spectrum…inventory

I’ve written posts today for both CNET and Forbes on legislation introduced yesterday by Senators Olympia Snowe and John Kerry that would require the FCC and NTIA to complete inventories of existing spectrum allocations.  These inventories were mandated by President Obama last June (after Congress failed to pass legislation), but got lost at the FCC in the net neutrality armageddon.

Everyone believes that without relatively quick action to make more spectrum available, the mobile Internet could seize up.  Given the White House’s showcasing of wireless as a leading source of new jobs, investment, and improved living conditions for all Americans, both Congress and President Obama, along with the FCC and just about everyone else, knows this is a crisis that must be avoided.

Indeed, the National Broadband Plan estimates conservatively that mobile users will need 300-500 mhz of new spectrum over the next 5-10 years.

The last major auction, however, conducted in 2008 for analog spectrum given up by broadcasters in the Digital TV transition, was only 62 mhz.  And that process took years.

So while auctions–perhaps of more of the over-the-air allocations–could help, it can’t be the silver bullet.  We’ll need creative solutions–including technology to make better use of existing allocations, spectrum sharing, release of government-held frequencies.

But why not start by figuring out who has spectrum now, and see if it’s really being put to the use that’s in the best interests of American consumers, who are ultimately the owners of the entire range.

You can guess why some people would prefer not to open that dialogue.

And perhaps why something so obvious as an inventory doesn’t already exist.

Congress Zeroes in on FCC's Net Neutrality Order

Following up on my Congressional testimony last week, I’ve written two articles on how the House and Senate are moving forward with plans to undo the FCC’s December 23,2010 “Open Internet” order, aka net neutrality.    For Forbes, I write about the experience of being a witness before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet, and provide some background on how the FCC found itself backed into a corner that led to the unpopular (on both sides) new rules.  See “Deep in the Net Neutrality Trenches.”

On CNET this morning, I review in detail the steps taken last week by Congress.  These include two hearings, one featuring all five FCC Commissioners.  After the hearings, the House approved an amendment to the on-going budget negotiations that would deny the agency any funding to implement or enforce its rules.  Later, both the House and Senate issued a Joint Resolution of Disapproval, which, if passed, would nullify the rulemaking and deny the FCC future authority to try again.

The conventional wisdom suggests that these are futile gestures, as President Obama would veto either measure (as well as other pending legislation on the subject).  But not necessarily.  Even before the new Congress came in, the President demonstrated a willingness to negotiate with Republicans (e.g., extending the Bush tax cuts).  Net neutrality is certainly a priority for the White House, but it may not be as high as other priorities.

Two Years on the Internet Equals an Eternity

Video is now available for all of the excellent programming at this year’s State of The Net 2011 conference. (Programming will also be available over time on C-SPAN’s video library.) The Conference, organized by the Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus, featured Members of Congress, leading academics, Administration, agency, and Congressional staff and other provocateurs. Topics this year ranged from social networking, Wikileaks, COICA, copyright, privacy, security, broadband policy and, of course, the end-of-the-year vote by the FCC to approve new rules for network management by broadband providers, aka net neutrality. Continue reading →