Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Jessica Rosenworcel And the Mantle of Michael Copps

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) moved forward on the transition of the phone system by adopting an order at its February open meeting. By a 5-0 vote, in addition to a number of other important first steps, the FCC adopted a set of governing principles for the transition. The principles focus on core values: Universal Service, Consumer protection, Competition, and Public Safety.

 

These principles did not just drop out of thin air.  Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel first proposed them in this speech in December of 2012. While few have noticed, Rosenworcel continued to quietly and effectively push this framework, culminating in a unanimous vote with broad approval from both corporations and public interest groups.

 

More amazing for this hyper-partisan and contentious times, the principles capture both progressive values and conservative values, traditionally shared by Republicans and Democrats alike. The idea that access to communications services is so essential to participation in society that the Federal government has a role in making sure that ALL Americans have affordable access goes back to the New Deal and Section 1 of the Communications Act. But the basic precept is even older, going all the way back to Founding Fathers. Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the express power ”to establish post offices and post roads” in recognition that ensuring that all Americans can communicate with each other is what helps make us a single country and one people — a core conservative value. As the arteries of commerce and the means of communication have evolved from post roads and post offices to steam trains and telegraphs to the automobile and the telephone, we have continued to preserve this idea of universal service to All Americans as a core traditional value of what it means to be an American.

 

But as essential and shared as these values are, no one was talking about them as the basis for the Phone Transition, or how to bring them forward into what Chairman Wheeler calls “The Fourth Network Revolution,” until Commissioner Rosenworcel started the conversation. From the time AT&T first proposed a “sunset of the Public Switched Telephone Network” during the National Broadband Plan in 2009 until Rosenworcel’s December 2012 speech, no one even talked about values – let alone proposed that a set of fundamental values needed to guide the transition. The conversation remained mired — and stalled — in myopic focus and bickering on the details of specific regulations. Commissioner Rosenworcel understood well before anyone else that the best way to move forward, and the way to keep the process firmly centered on the public interest, required reaffirming our fundamental values as the first step.

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Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Impact of Net Neutrality Decision On The Phone Transition, or “What Happens When You Can’t Make The Phone Service Work Like A Phone.”

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I suppose I can best sum this up as “sucks to be rural.” On the plus side, it looks like all those lobbyists who went around getting states to pass laws prohibiting any kind of regulation of IP-based services and prohibiting local governments from offering broadband service wasted their money.

Also on the plus side, we can regulate the crap out of IP-based phone services to enhance consumer protection because it is all part of the virtuous circle of innovation. On the downside, if you are Mosque in the middle of small town USA, your local VOIP provider can now totally refuse to serve you. Sure, the fact that we cannot impose a duty to indiscriminately serve the public on VOIP providers (since that is the “hallmark of common carriage”) will only impact a statistically small number of people like the poor, the unpopular, and those in high cost rural areas. But screw it. Protecting the weak and helpless is soooo ‘New Deal.’ Who the #$@! needs a rule of law when we got markets baby!

Sure, some people we like might get rolled over by big companies and have no recourse. But ya know what? Who cares. Cause if a few big companies accidentally run over a few customers now and then, does that really matter? I mean, really?

And the best part of getting rid of that dumb old common carriage stuff? All the people that matter — like the judges making the decisions and the lobbyists arguing how we don’t need this stuff — will never even notice.  They never even have to deal with all those annoying weak, poor, vulnerable or unpopular people that the law protects. It’s like getting rid of the 4th Amendment, or stop and frisk, you only miss it if you’re someone we don’t give a crap about.

Read below to preview the exciting new world that now awaits us as “the fourth network revolution” meets “I can’t do rural call completion but I’m too scared to make VOIP Title II. So suck it rural.”

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Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Quick First Cut On Network Neutrality Decision — State of Net Neutrality Today

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 I will, eventually, have time to write up a full dissection of he D.C. Circuit’s latest magnum opus on Net Neutrality, Verizon v. FCC.  Until then, I am going to be recycling here posts I wrote and posted on the blog of my employer Public Knowledge. i also highly recommend this blog post from my Public Knowledge colleague Clarissa Ramon on the impact of this decision and Monday’s D.C. Circuit Order staying the FCC’s August decision to regulate the outrageous phone rates charged by prison phone companies communities of color.

 

Below, the current — and now thoroughly confused — state of Net Neutrality and FCC authority as it stands today.

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Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Globalstar’s Stellar Chutzpah: Trying To Hold Up New Free WiFi To Leverage “Licensed WiFi.”

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A very few of us have paid much attention to something called the “Globalstar Petition.” Briefly, Globalstar would like a couple of billion dollars in free spectrum favors from the FCC to offer what it calls a “Terrestrial Low-Power Service” (TLPS) on its satellite frequencies. As Globalstar has the great good fortune to have frequencies right next to the 2.4 GHz band most popular for WiFi, Globalstar hopes to leverage existing WiFi equipment and offer a “paid, carrier grade” WiFi-like service.

 

Recently, Globalstar attracted my negative attention by trying to leverage a fairly important FCC proceeding to expand unlicensed spectrum use above 5 GHz. Globalstar has raised bogus interference issues in the 5 GHz proceeding, and rather unsubtly suggested to the FCC that it could solve the WiFi “traffic jam” by granting Globalstar’s Petition for spectrum goodies so we could have a pay for WiFi service instead of having more of that pesky free WiFi (you can find Globalstar’s extremely unsubtle quotes here on page 3 and here on page 2.

 

So it seems an opportune moment to explain:

 

  1. What’s going on with the Globalstar Petition;

 

  1. What’s going on with the UNII-1 Band in the 5 GHz proceeding;

 

  1. How Globalstar are being utterly unsubtle in their efforts to hold the 5 GHz proceeding to try to leverage their ask in their Petition; and,

 

  1. How Globalstar’s jerkwad-ittude in the UNII-1 proceeding raises serious concerns about Globalstar’s willingness to play nice with the 2.4 GHz band, which could undermine the entire “WiFi economy.”

 

More on Globalstar’s truly stellar chutzpah, and why the FCC may want to rethink granting the Globalstar Petition, below . . . .

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Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Duck Dynasty Prompts Conservatives To Rediscover The Fairness Doctrine.

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Apparently, I am one of 9 people in the United States that had never heard of “Duck Dynasty” prior to last week.  Even I however, could not miss the furor over remarks by Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson and his remarks that homosexuality is “degrading to the human soul” and that African Americans were “better off under Jim Crow.” As one might expect, A&E, which owns Duck Dynasty, promptly suspended Robertson. Also predictably, conservative raised much hue and cry over this, calling it the worst sort of censorship and intolerance.

Normally, I limit my response to this to four words: “Dixie Chicks. Pot. Kettle.”

But to my surprise and delight, I now see conservatives such as Governor Bobby Jindal (R-LA), Former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK), and Senators David Vitter (R-TX) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) invoking the concepts of the First Amendment embodied in the Fairness Doctrine in defense of Mr. Robertson. Given that Conservatives have decided to revive their perennial boogeyman about the “Return of The Fairness Doctrine,” this staunch defense of the principles of the Fairness Doctrine could not be more timely.

 

Some more irony savoring worm turning goodness below . . .

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Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Celebrate 100th Anniversary Of the Kingsbury Commitment With A Telecom Steel Cage Death Match and A Copy of Our Home Game!

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Tomorrow, Thursday December 19, marks the 100th Anniversary of the “Kingsbury Commitment.” As just about no one outside the wonky world of telecom policy knows, the “Kingsbury Commitment” was the resolution of the anti-trust case between American Telephone & Telegraph (as AT&T was known then) and the Department of Justice wherein AT&T agreed to provide phone service to everyone (either directly or by providing interconnection to other local monopoly providers) and interconnect with its rivals in exchange for natural monopoly in most of its markets. You can see the text here.

 

 

Put another way, tomorrow marks the 100th anniversary of when we mandated interconnection and universal phone service as the fundamental values/defining responsibilities of the phone system. For those following my endless blather about the “transformation of the phone system” the Kingsbury Commitment provides the cornerstone of those 5 Fundamental Values I’m always going on about (see exciting white paper here).

 

With a Steel Cage Policy Deathmatch and with release of copies of our home game!

 

See details below . . .

 

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Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Ten Years Of Tales of the Sausage Factory — What Snarky Trip It’s Been

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December 2013 brings two important anniversaries for the world of telecom policy. First, December 19 marks the 100th anniversary of the Kingsbury Commitment, the letter from American Telephone and Telegraph Vice President Nathan Kingsbury to to the U.S. Attorney General offering to settle the antitrust action against AT&T by allowing interconnection for all surviving rival phone companies (which by that time mostly meant companies in rural areas AT&T did not want to buy) and supporting the concept of universal service. (text here)

 

Second, December 10 marks the tenth anniversary of when I started doing this blog, Tales of the Sausage Factory.

 

Stipulated the first has had much greater impact on telecom policy, but I like to think we here at Wetmachine have done our bit as best we can.   For those curious, here is a link to my first ever post, although I actually think this over here (which quickly follows) remains one of the funniest things I’ve ever written about telecom policy (mind you, this is not a hard bar to meet).

 

A few nostalgic reflections and links to my favorite posts below, as well as seeking reader advice on what to do going forward . . .

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Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Free Event on IP Transition In Boston Next Tuesday. Come Hear Me Preach.

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Next Tuesday, December 3, the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable will hold a free event open to the public about the whole “transition of the telephone system thing” I keep going on about. As you can see from this flyer here, the event will run from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Suffolk University Law School. I’ll be speaking on the last panel — which is generally where the “consumer stuff” gets stuck.

 

As you can also note from the flyer, the list of speakers is practically indistinguishable from a similar event here in D.C., except the moderators are local. So if you have attended any of the various events on this subject here in D.C. in the last 6 months, you are unlikely to miss anything. On the flip side, if you are local to Boston, then you bloody well ought to show up. We’re talking about the future of your phone service.

 

Stay tuned . . .

Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Cell Phones On A Plane Do Not Deserve The Same Freak Out As Snakes On A Plane

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So it appears people like the idea of using their tablets on planes, but not using cell phones on planes.Or, to paraphrase Samuel L. Jackson, a lot of people do not want mother——ing cellphones on these mother—–ing planes.

 

Whatever the merits of this position, however, we should not ask the FCC to use interference rules for what is plainly a social policy. To the contrary, as the Washington Post Editorial Board rightly points out, the FCC ought to have rules that acknowledge reality. Bluntly, do we really want agencies to lie to us about technology rather than simply own the social policy?

 

For those freaking out over the possibility of adding “Loud Cell Phone Talker” to the airline bestiary along with “Crying Baby Beast,” “Barfy Neighbor” and “Snoring Person That Drops The Seat In My Lap,” I discuss a few things to give you hope before you start shooting out windows to pull cell phones out of planes.

 

More below . . . .

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