Net Neutrality

Verizon Sees The Light On Net Neutrality But It’s Too Little Too Late

By: Mike Montgomery

Verizon’s most recent statement on net neutrality is really the height of hypocrisy. To be clear, I completely agree with the no blocking and no throttling principles outlined in the post. Yet their sudden enthusiasm to ban zero rating services and grant the FCC power to chill innovation through antiquated regulation will ultimately harm broadband investment and consumer access to modern 21st century Internet-based services and applications. It’s curious that Verizon has recently found religion on this single-most divisive and long-lasting tech public policy issue of this century.

For the past six years my organization has been pushing for a third way on net neutrality: laws that support an open, free Internet but are affirmatively enshrined into law by Congress instead of mandated by the FCC and are subject to change every 4–8 years. Unfortunately, we’re currently in legal no-man’s land, and, as we predicted, the rules are now going through the legal meat grinder as we are essentially legislating through litigation.

As we predicted, the FCC has set in motion a process where tech policy is set through litigation, rather than through collaborative and publicly vetted legislation. This creates many problems. Waiting means incredible uncertainty for anyone building a business that might be affected by changing net neutrality rules (in other words, everyone building a business on the Internet).

No one knows what the courts will decide. The legal process is, by definition, uncertain. And we’re in the middle of a heated presidential race.

Read the full article here.

Net Neutrality: a Response to Representative Anna Eshoo

By Mike Montgomery, Executive Director of CALinnovates

Representative Anna Eshoo (D-Palo Alto) got it right when she wrote about the importance of Net Neutrality to the next generation in an op-ed published in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Millennials already live their lives online. If business or the government makes it more difficult for those young people to have clear access to all parts of the Internet, it will only further isolate them from the processes of government. Already, as Eshoo points out, roughly half of Millennials don’t identify with any political party. Take away Net Neutrality and it sends the strong message that government doesn’t share Millennials’ priorities. That would only push the next generation father away.

And while I agree with Rep. Eshoo’s assessment that an Internet without fast lanes is essential to the future, she is missing a critical point about the future of the open Internet.

Read the full article here.

So Far Net Neutrality Hasn’t Broken The Internet

Shares of Verizon — the future home of this publication — a company viscerally opposed to net neutrality, are down a fraction in a down market. Investors, it seems, aren’t pricing much downside into net neutrality in the immediate aftermath of its enaction.

There is a certain irony to the Verizon point. Verizon brought the last suit against net neutrality that led to the new rules. Title II is in no small way due to the actions of that ISP.

Legal challenges to net neutrality are on a fast track and should be wrapped up, perhaps, by the end of 2015. The key aspect to an accelerated court schedule is that the market needs certainty on the matter. If the FCC’s rules are overturned, things change. If the agency succeeds in court, things don’t change.

Following the FCC’s victory to put down a stay of its rules, Wheeler said that the decision “give[s] broadband providers the certainty and economic incentive to build fast and competitive broadband networks.” ISPs would rather have it another way.

Aside from legal threats, another potentiality looms for net neutrality: A new administration’s FCC changing the rules. That fact adds another wrinkle to the current presidential election cycle — who wins will be able to either maintain, or shape, net neutrality policy in a different direction.

Congressional action, of course, remains a possibility.

Mike Montgomery of CALinnovates, a technology interest group, told TechCrunch that if the party in the White House changes, things could rapidly shift:

A Republican President will surely make the appointment of a new FCC Chairman a priority, and that new Chairman would likely take a sledgehammer to the Open Internet Order as her or his first order of business. […] The new President’s appointment of a new FCC Chairman will shift the balance of power at the Commission, turning a 3-2 Democratic majority into a Democratic minority, thus providing the votes to either completely overturn the imposition of Title II or drastic forbearance, leading to a theoretical ‘wild west’ that would lack any clear rules of the road, which would create a nightmare scenario for consumers, startups and the greater business community, and investors.

Montgomery said that if the net neutrality rules lose in court, it could lead to “a situation where fast lanes, blocking, and throttling will be squarely back on the table.”

In short, here we are, as expected. Welcome back to net neutrality.

CALinnovates’ Statement on DC Court’s Denial of Title II Stay

The following statement can be attributed to CALinnovates’ Executive Director Mike Montgomery:

“This is the first of what will be many court decisions with regard to Title II and Net Neutrality. Unfortunately, these decisions will take several years and leave a great deal of uncertainty in their wake – uncertainty that will hinder innovation, business planning and ultimately the growth of the Internet and the future of the new economy.

“Today’s legal decision changes nothing about the policy imperative, which is why it is essential for Congress to take action in a bipartisan fashion to settle the issue around Net Neutrality once and for all in a way that moves beyond Title II and takes a 21st-century approach to technology policy.”

The 2016 Net Neutrality Time Bomb

(Special to Medium)

No matter who wins the next presidential election, Net Neutrality isn’t secure without legislation.

Elections aren’t always a good thing (I know that sounds un-American but hear me out…)

Elections are the bedrock of our democracy and one of the many things that make this country great. If an elected leader isn’t cutting it, the voters have the opportunity to kick him or her out of office every few years. That’s powerful stuff.

But when it comes to Net Neutrality, the very nature of elections puts the Internet at risk. Thanks to recent action by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Net Neutrality is now the province of the FCC.

On January 20, 2016, the nation’s new President will be inaugurated and he (or she) will appoint a new FCC Chairman to replace current Chairman Tom Wheeler. That person will have an outsized influence on the future of Net Neutrality and he (or she) may decide not to enforce the current rules or to change them all together. Everything is riding on the next President’s feeling about Net Neutrality. Although the campaign season is just getting started, we’re already getting a look at who the likely candidates will be and where they stand on Internet freedom.

Read the full article here: https://medium.com/@calinnovates/the-2016-net-neutrality-time-bomb-6bac50e0b7ab

NERA: Effect of Title II on Investment Incentives “Worse Than We Thought”

When the FCC released it’s Net Neutrality Order last week, it cited a White Paper commissioned by CALinnovates and drafted by NERA.  The authors of NERA’s White Paper issued a response.  What follows is the conclusion, with a link to the full response, below:

We stand behind the basic results of NERA’s White Paper and find that, if anything, the Order has actually made us more worried about the state of competition and innovation than we were before seeing it, assuming it manages to pass its initial, and inevitable, court challenges. Although the Order is quite long, the actual new rules are very short, reflecting the difficulties that nomenclature and case-by-case analysis will bring. Further, the Order tries to describe the new rules as “light-handed,” ignoring the incentives of aggrieved parties to achieve through FCC litigation what they could not achieve in open competition. As a result, innovation is shackled with new costs that could kill, or at least severely hamper, further development of the Internet ecosystem.

Click here to read NERA’s full response

CALinnovates Statement Regarding FCC Release Of Open Internet Order

The following can be attributed to Executive Director Mike Montgomery

“The inevitable happened today – the FCC’s website broke as it tried to release its 400-page ‘Open Internet’ order, two weeks after the agency voted to approve utility-style regulation of the Internet. Who saw that coming?  Errors aside, today marks the beginning of yet another chapter of the ongoing and seemingly never-ending net neutrality debate. Now that the actual document is finally here, the partisan feud about the agency’s lack of transparency on an issue dealing precisely with openness and transparency might finally be put to pasture.  In the coming days, speed-readers will have their moment in the sun as the nation scrambles to comprehend the 400-page Order and its effect on the Internet ecosystem.

We hope this new stage of transparency and openness will be applied long-term, but the FCC vote will likely prove the wrong vehicle as litigation and future FCCs loom.  Today, CALinnovates calls upon our nation’s federally elected officials to prove the naysayers wrong – bipartisan legislation isn’t just a pipe dream. It’s a necessity.”

US can’t have it both ways on Internet

From a March 6, 2015 op-ed in The Hill by Executive Director Mike Montgomery

The United States’ policy schizophrenia regarding the Internet was on full display last week in Washington. On one day, the Commerce Department explained to a Senate committee why it’s important for the U.S. government to take a hands-off approach to the Internet as a reason why it’s ending its ties to ICANN. And on the very next day, the Federal Communications Commission explained why it’s important to take a hands-on approach to the Internet by imposing net neutrality rules.

Meanwhile, other governments must be smirking at us.

Read the full article here 

CALinnovates Statement on Federal Communications Commission Vote on Open Internet

The following quote can be attributed to Mike Montgomery, Executive Director, CALinnovates:

“The loud sound coming from Washington today is resounding cheers from the lawyers, lobbyists and fundraising groups that will gain from today’s FCC ruling for years to come. There will be a rush to the courtroom, which will take years to sort out.

Congress must step in and provide a solution that affirms the principles of net neutrality but does so with modern legislation that reflects 21st Century technology. The next billion we spend should be on innovation, not lawsuits.”

LINK:  http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/calinnovates-statement-on-federal-communications-commission-vote-on-open-internet-300042154.html 

The FCC Should Look To The Future, Not The Past, On Internet Regulation

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s explanation of why he will propose regulating the Internet under Title II is full of references to the past. Perhaps that makes sense considering his proposal would regulate the Internet under the 80-year-old Telecommunications Act. But his words speak volumes about his misunderstanding of how best to balance an open Internet with 21st Century regs.

A large part of Chairman Wheeler’s argument rests on his own experience in the 1980s when he was president of a startup called NABU. The young company offered high-speed Internet service (at the time, 1.5 megabits per second) over cable television lines.

But NABU was thoroughly demolished by AOL. Wheeler claims that the sole reason AOL’s slower service won out over NABU was because AOL founder Steve Case was able to offer AOL over the open phone lines while NABU had to ask each cable company for permission to use their lines. Open vs. closed … an open and shut case.

But the real history of NABU is more nuanced than that. According to Scott Wallsten at the Technology  Policy Institute, NABU users not only had to pay a fee for the service, they also had to buy or lease a $299 NABU computer. But NABU couldn’t offer enough content to induce people to pay that kind of money.

Also the technology wasn’t quite there yet. According to Wallsten:

Cable TV systems were not built to handle much upstream traffic—an issue they still face today. Upgrading the cable infrastructure for two-way communication required significant investment.

The timing just wasn’t right for NABU and that had more to do with innovation than with regulation.  AOL out-innovated NABU.

We need our leaders to be looking forward, not back. By the time this gets litigated, President Obama and Chairman Wheeler will be out of office, and we have no idea how future leaders will apply these new rules. Wheeler’s post shows the need for legislation that modernizes our technology laws instead of trying to regulate a constantly evolving technology using outdated ideas.  As such, it’s time for Congress to step up and work together on a bipartisan basis to craft (and pass) legislation that will remove the uncertainty that comes from electoral musical chairs, because we’re looking at very different regulatory framework if, for example, Jeb Bush rather than Hillary Clinton becomes the next President of our great nation.