Series of Tubes

Net Neutrality, ICANN, and other issued related to internet infrastructure

The Last Time The FCC Classified A Service As Title II Was 2007. Here’s How It Worked.

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Predictably, as we get closer to actually adopting Title II for broadband, we see much scrambling about by folks who never seriously considered the question of how Title II would actually work because no one in the press or the opposition ever really thought it could get that far. Opponents of Title II, needless to say, describe a blasted bureaucratic Hellscape smothering broadband service with (to quote the latest missive from a bunch of House and Senate Republicans) “1000 active rules that are based on Title II, and 700 pages of the C.F.R.”

 

After 6 solid years of Republicans opting for the partisan politics of obstruction rather than engaging on substance, such ridiculous claims hardly come as a surprise. It’s also a rather silly argument given that the bulk of those rules address things that would not apply to broadband and that everyone — even Republicans — actually like: making sure  9-1-1 works reliably, fixing rural call completion problems, keeping track of phone reliability and phone outages during natural disasters, protecting the privacy of our phone calls and requiring providers to report data breaches, etc.

 

Still, even without deliberate efforts to muck things up and exaggerate things, I recognize that this whole “Title II” thing doesn’t happen every day and lots of folks have questions about what the heck does this all mean. As I (and others) have noted in the past, classification doesn’t have to be a big deal. To illustrate this, I will go back to the last time the FCC classified a service — automatic voice roaming in the wireless world — as a Title II service. As we will see, this took remarkably little effort. The FCC explicitly rejected the requirement to do rate regulation or a requirement to file tariffs with the prices and did not need to engage in any extensive forbearance. They just said “nah, we’re not gonna do that.” The final adopted rules are less than a page and a half.

 

I will also note that despite classifying automatic voice roaming as a Title II service in 2007 (and classifying mobile wireless phone service as a Title II service in 1993), the wireless industry seems to be doing OK, with more than 300 million subscribers and (as CTIA never tires of telling us) several gagillion dollars worth of capital investment.

 

The automatic voice roaming decision also provides a nice comparison with a similar service classified under NOT TITLE II some years later. In 2011, the FCC issued an Order adopting data roaming rules, but couldn’t bring itself to go the Title II route. The result was an insanely complicated “commercial reasonableness” standard which requires wireless carriers to negotiate under a bunch of vague guidelines that still allow carriers to avoid coming to an actual deal. As the D.C. Circuit pointed out in affirming this approach, the FCC needed to leave enough room for carriers to discriminate against each other to avoid triggering the “common carrier prohibition.” Recently, T-Mobile (which opposes using Title II) filed a Petition on data roaming with the FCC alleging that the existing “commercially reasonable” standard is utterly useless unless the FCC adopts a bunch of “benchmarks” and presumptions to put some teeth into the standard. Without getting into the merits of the data roaming petition (which my employer Public Knowledge supports), it is interesting to compare how the Title II automatic voice roaming worked out v. the Title III/Title I data roaming rules.

 

I do not claim that reclassifying broadband as a Title II service (which, as I have noted before, was tariffed back in the day it was Title II) is exactly comparable. Rather, I offer this as an example of the principle of the Black Swan. Just as the appearance of a single black swan falsifies the statement “all swans are white,” the hysterical ravings of the anti-net neutrality crowd that classifying something as Title II would require the FCC to impose price controls, tariffs, and the occasional human sacrifice to avert structural separation is falsified by demonstrating that the FCC has, in the past, classified services as Title II and did not impose any of these things. In fact, the Title II solution worked out much better than the NOT TITLE II alternative.

 

More detail below . . . .

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President Obama Says Some Good Things About Net Neutrality and Intellectual Property.

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Everyone likes to get mad at President Obama these days. So I figured I would briefly highlight some good things Obama said during this Town Hall Meeting last week while I was off doing the Jewish holiday thing. After the holiday, I saw an email with the subject: “Obama Talks About Net Neutrality & Intellectual Property.”

 

I am sufficiently weird that “Obama Talks About Net Neutrality and Intellectual Property” is probably the most irresistible clickbait headline for me that I can think of, so of course I was hooked.

 

Speaking of clickbait, more below . . . .

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Wheeler: “We Now Return To Our Transition of the Phone System Already In Progress.”

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In the last two days, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler has made back-to-back speeches that on their surface appear as dissimilar as could be. First, he gave this speech at the Fall 2014 COMPTEL Show. The next day, he gave this speech at the 32nd Annual Everett Parker Lecture. Dig a little deeper, however (and keep in mind what I have previously said about Tom Wheeler signaling what he wants to do if anyone actually pays attention) you notice some startling commonalities between these two speeches. Notably, this is the first time Wheeler has brought up the transition of the phone network in a serious way in a long time. And, in both speeches he made it very clear that transition of the phone system to an all IP platform does not end the FCC’s role.

ITo summarize my take aways:

1. Wheeler wants to shift the FCC back into working on the IP Transition despite the fact that AT&T is not going to have its pilot project ready until the second half of 2015. It is, after all, the thing he came to the FCC to do in the first place before net neutrality and Comcast/TWC essentially hijacked 2014.

 

2. While the nature and form of regulation will change, the FCC will continue to play a critical role — during the transition and after the transition — both in promoting competition and protecting consumers.

 

3. That Network Compact Wheeler keeps talking about? He really means it. When he leaves the FCC, he wants to leave an agency that still protects network users under this fundamental set of values.

 

A bit more below . . .

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Forbearance Redux — Still Easy Peasy

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As the groundswell for reclassifying broadband as a Title II telecommunications service grows, the arguments against reclassification have grown increasingly shrill and desperate. Like Democrats frantically emailing supporters to try to hold the Senate, the National Cable Telecommunications Association (NCTA), has been flooding DC radio stations with advertising denouncing public infrastructure and calling for the privatization of our roadways in an effort to whip up anti-Title II sentiment (I notice their newfound embrace of Ayn Rand does not include repeal of poll attachment subsidies). As I’ve noted previously, only inside-the-beltway does anyone think “death to public roads, death to your right to clean water, and lets deregulate energy so we can have the lights flicker when the wind blows” is a winning argument. But panic does things to people . . .

 

Which brings me back to the arguments about “forbearance.” I blogged last July that the FCC can forbear fairly easily from any provisions of the Communications Act it thinks shouldn’t apply to broadband if it reclassifies broadband as Title II. As my employer Public Knowledge has pointed out at length in our official comments, this is neither necessary or good policy. Most of the provisions the anti-Title II crowd point to as potentially crushing the spirit out of Broadband Equestria (“Broadband Is Magic!”) have been effectively deregulated already for traditional telephone service, and other provisions actually support good stuff like Universal Service Fund or privacy rights for consumers. Nevertheless, if the FCC feels the need to indulge in broad forbearance, it has the authority to do so.

 

Needless to say, those invested in portraying reclassification as The Death Of Freedom As We Know It do not take kindly to having their nonsense called out in plain English, with lots of links to the relevant documents. Some folks have therefore devoted some considerable effort in the last few months to explaining why, all cited evidence to the contrary, forbearing from Title II would be Utterly Impossible.

 

So I find myself once again revisiting this topic. Happily, the arguments break down into 2 basic categories:

 

  1. None of the precedent I cited applies anymore because of the “Qwest Forbearance.”

 

  1. There is something magical and exceptional about broadband that makes it impossible to forbear here where it would be contrary to the interests of the carriers, but forbearance would be easy-peasy in any case where carriers want forbearance.

As I shall explain below, argument #1 relies on a fundamental misunderstanding of how administrative law works (and a failure to read any recent forbearance cases, which address this issue squarely and reject this argument), whereas argument #2 relies on a fundamental (and rather self-serving) misunderstanding of how the forbearance statute works.

 

More below . . .

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Reliability Rather Than Rainbows — Why Title II Remains the Best Option for Net Neutrality.

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[Reprinting here a blog post published last week by my employer Public Knowledge.]

Recently, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) published a blog post describing the “rainbow of policy and legal options” available to protect the open Internet, contrasting them to other “monochromatic options.” Reading this blog post reminded me of the quote apocryphally (and incorrectly) attributed to Winston Churchill:   “Americans will always do the right thing – after exhausting all the other alternatives.” While I applaud the FCC moving in the right direction on policy, I hope the FCC does not exhaust itself chasing the policy rainbow when the right thing – drab and monochromatic as it might be – continues to stare them in the face.

On the positive side, the FCC’s blog post reflects an understanding that the FCC’s original proposal from May, permitting paid prioritization (aka “Fast Lanes”) under a ‘commercial reasonableness’ standard will not do the job of protecting the open Internet. The political reality has also shifted, thanks to a tremendous public outcry in favor of recognizing that broadband is the essential service of the 21st Century, a fundamental service that everyone increasingly relies on and therefore – to use the legal expression – is affected with the public interest. Wheeler’s own writing on the network compact likewise recognizes this fundamental principle, which has made his resistance to embracing Title II and insistence on exhausting all other option all the more frustrating.

Judging by the FCC’s blog post, we have made progress since May. Title II has gone from a reluctant inclusion in response to public outcry to something “very much on the table.” But the FCC continues to look for something that will spare it the embarrassment of admitting the agency went down the wrong path ten years ago when it reclassified broadband as a Title I information service, and continues to be distracted by its bright shiny new Section 706 authority.

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I Summarize (Some of) My Net Neutrality Arguments in 15 Minutes

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Back in August, I spoke about network neutraliy as part of a panel the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) Consumer Advisory Committee. My opening 15 minutes hit most of what I think are the important (and often overlooked) arguments around network neutrality. Specifically:

1. In terms of real world experiments, the service that has never been Title II is cable television. The service that has always been Title II is wireless voice (or, as we telecom folks call it, “Commercial Mobile Radio Service,” (CMRS)). As we know, consumers loooooove their cable television provider more than any other service, and hate wireless as completely not innovative. Oh wait, other way around.

2. Net neutrality is extremely important for maintaining diversity of voices. Not simply the ability of commercial entities to compete on a level playing field, but the ability of anyone to speak without an intermediary. When we eliminate that, even with the best of intentions, we destroy something that makes the Internet special.

3. Title II is a flexible and well understood tool for protecting consumers, protecting diversity of voices, and protecting competition. Title I and Section 706 are a roll of the dice with our fundamental rights.

This is not a comprehensive list of arguments in favor of net neutrality by any means. I also recognize that “Harold Feld Talks For 15 Minutes About Net Neutrality” is probably the Worst. Clickbait. Headline. EVAR! But I hope some of you will find it useful and entertaining.

 

Stay tuned .  .  . .

The Comcast Witness Protection Program and Misplaced Rage.

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There is a style of article I find online occasionally that takes a classic work of film or literature and tries to flip your idea about who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, or vice versa. For example, this piece explaining why Glinda the Good Witch is really the villain of the Wizard of Oz and the Wicked Witch of the West is just an innocent woman wronged.

 

I thought of that when I saw recent pieces by Randolph May and Geoffrey Manne explaining how the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), by complying with its rules and doing its job soliciting input on the Comcast/Time Warner Cable from stakeholders scared to come forward for fear of reprisals, makes the FCC the bad guy and Comcast the innocent victim. Some of this concern seems to flow from a misunderstanding of the law. The FCC can’t act on anything outside the public record, so the concern that Comcast won’t get to make its case because of some body of secret evidence is groundless.

 

In addition – and this is why I’m particularly bitter here – Comcast set the precedent more than ten years ago for having the FCC look at stuff outside the public record as part of a merger review, and the D.C. Circuit affirmed it when I challenged it as a due process violation. So even if it did make a practical difference, the D.C. Circuit says it’s totally OK (at least when exclusion of evidence from the record favors Comcast).

 

Nor is this process so unusual as my Opposite Numbers (as I call my colleagues on the Libertarian side) believe. True, this is the first time the FCC actually listened to me (and others) and publicized the relevant FCC rules (although, as I explain below, I don’t think I actually had much to do with this). But this is also a rather exceptional merger. As for use of the relevant procedures, my experience is rather contrary to that of Randy May. I’ve not only urged the FCC to use (and publicize) the relevant procedures, I’ve invoked them.  Nor is it unusual for the FCC to solicit input from stakeholders.

 

Below, I offer an alternate perspective and deal with the various objections my Opposite Numbers raise for why they think the FCC shouldn’t be telling stakeholders afraid of retaliation to come in and speak off the record.

 

More below . . .

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Is Comcast’s Awful Service Grounds For Blocking The TWC Deal? Yes, Actually.

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The last few months have brought us a spate of Comcast horror stories and Comcast-hate. As captured by this totally not safe for work “Comcast — We Don’t Give a F—“ video from Funny or Die, the announcement that Comcast would acquire Time Warner Cable (TWC) has brought to boil a great deal of simmering resentment. Most recently, a recording of a subscriber spending 20 minutes trying to disconnect his Comcast service has prompted some investigating into Comcast’s service and employment practices. In particular, Adrianne Jefferies at  The Verge has been running an excellent series called “Comcast Confessions” based on hundreds of interviews with current and former Comcast employees showing that these long-standing customer service problems are not a blip but the result of systemic problems and deliberate business and strategy decisions pursued by the company (first three articles published so far here, here and here). I want to highlight this article in particular that puts together the pieces and shows how the TWC acquisition makes things worse.

 

From an academic standpoint, the wealth of data coming to light provides a great study on how conflicting economic incentives and difficulties in melding together a giant company by merger create awful customer service despite the persistent efforts of Comcast top management to improve customer service. But this blog isn’t about industrial organization and business practices for the fun of it. For me at the moment, the hot question is: does Comcast’s awful customer actually provide legal grounds for the FCC to block the Comcast/TWC merger?

 

Actually, yes. And I don’t just mean in the political “so many people hate Comcast the FCC can designate for hearing and survive Comcast’s political pushback.” I mean in the legal “the FCC has jurisdiction over this and should designate, as an issue for hearing, whether Comcast’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable is contrary to the public interest and in violation of various provisions of the Communications Act” sense. And yes, I get that customers are pretty much equally dissatisfied with TWC, which would prompt one to think this should be a wash as “not merger specific” (i.e., service is crappy before merger and crappy after merger, so who cares — other than customers?)  However, as I shall elaborate below, the unique nature of Comcast’s pervasive problems — combined with several other factors — makes this a rare (but not unprecedented) case where the nature of the problems is both merger specific and subject to FCC review.

 

And while I would not normally suggest that such problems alone could block a merger, it becomes one more factor in a deal that already has a lot of problems. At a minimum, it becomes one more set of potentially pervasive behavioral conditions that would prompt Comcast to walk away whether or not the FCC actually designates for hearing, especially if lots of consumers write to the FCC about it (hint, hint).

 

More below . . .

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What Do We Learn From Big Data Visualizations Of Net Neutrality Comments?

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“Big data” and “Data visualization” are all very trendy these days. As with all tools, data analysis and data visualization require appropriate context to make sense. As my old mentor Professor Robert Seidman liked to caution: “you generally find the most firetrucks at the biggest fires.” Understanding context tells you cause and effect so that you don’t try to fight fires by eliminating firetrucks.

 

Which brings me to the analysis of the public comments in the FCC’s ongoing network neutrality proceeding. The FCC has received about 1.1 million comments so far (we can expect more when replies come due in September). To facilitate further discussion and debate, the FCC released these comments in 5 XML Files that make doing searches and analysis much easier. We have started to see some data crunching of this data, with a range of results. As someone with 15 years experience with FCC proceedings, I can put these in some context.

 

Briefly, the volume of individual comments and the analysis shows a high level of engagement. More importantly, the comments do not simply reflect the talking points we see in the mainstream media and debated in DC policy circles. A lot of people are actually thinking about this issue and deciding why it is important to them personally, and it has nothing to do with cat videos or Netflix. For a lot of people, this debate goes to fundamental values of basic fairness, opportunity, the American Dream, and the preserving free expression and diversity of views.

 

Perhaps most tellingly, the number of individual comments opposing net neutrality regulations as unnecessary and overly burdensome government regulation of the Internet is so small as to be statistically irrelevant to data visualization analysis. Those people who are engaged on this and care enough to comment all run one way — they want the FCC to adopt rules that prohibit paid prioritization and protect an open Internet.

 

I unpack this below . . .

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Title II Forbearance Is Actually So Easy It Makes Me Want To Puke.

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For those following the debate around whether to classify broadband access service as a “Title II” telecommunications service under the Communications Act of 1934, you may have heard about a thing called “forbearance.” For those unfamiliar with telecom law lingo, “forbearance” refers to  a special magic power that Congress gave the FCC as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 — the major edit/update Congress did almost 20 years ago. The 1996 Act added Section 10 (now codified at 47 U.S.C. 160) which gives the FCC the power to say “you know that specific provision of law that Congress passed? We decide it really doesn’t make sense for us to enforce it in some particular case, so we will “forbear” (hence the term ‘forbearance’) from enforcing it.” Or, as the D.C. Circuit explained in a case called Orloff v. Federal Communications Commission, once the FCC invokes forbearance and decides to forbear from a particular statute, the statute for all practical purposes disappears.

 

For those familiar with the argument, you will also know that the anti-Net Neutrality camp argues that getting the FCC to forbear from any rule is such a horribly complicated and detailed market-by-market analysis that the FCC couldn’t possibly grant the kind of broad, nationwide forbearance we would need to make Title II workable. As someone who actually lived through the 8 years of the Bush Administration and saw almost every single pro-competition provision of the 1996 Act stripped away by forbearance proceedings, I can only say “hah, I wish.”

Anyone who actually troubles to look up cases like Earthlink v. FCC or Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users Committee v. FCC, or a bunch of other FCC and DC Circuit cases that are not that hard to find, you will discover that Forbearance is so easy it makes a consumer protection and rule of law guy like me want to puke. Srsly, the standards on this are so low, and so deferential to the FCC, that if Chairman Wheeler stands up at an open meeting and chants “Broadband is great, competition is good, be deregulated like you should. All in favor say ‘aye!'” — and then at least two other Commissioners vote yes — the DC Circuit will affirm it. Heck, according to ATT, Inc. v. FCC, you can even forbear as against potential obligations that don’t even exist yet.

Not that I expect mere facts to alter firmly held opinions that have become factesque. What Paul Krugman has termed the Very Serious People of telecom have all decided that Title II is a terrible onerous thing and that forbearance is just not going to make it work — despite the fact that the stupid cell phone you’re using couldn’t even have existed if Congress hadn’t made it Title II in 1993 by adding Section 332(c) of the Communications Act and the only non-Title II service we have other than broadband access — cable service — is widely regarded a monopolistic nightmare with all the innovating power of a fossilized brick. But the lawyer and eternal optimist in me keeps trying. So I unpack all this below — with lots of quotes because I know most of y’all not gonna actually click through to the cases.

Besides, I do a My Little Pony (MLP) mashup below because ”Broadband is magic!” And that always cracks me up. . . .

 

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