By Martin H. Bosworth
ConsumerAffairs.com
February 15, 2007
There's a shift in the wind here in Washington, D.C., and it's not
just from the bone-freezing winter.
Consumer groups and technology advocates are aggressively challenging the federal government to provide more oversight and advocacy for equal access to the Internet, aided by a Democratic Congress that is eager to challenge the Republican Administration.
Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), chair of the powerful House Energy and Commerce committee and its Telecommuncations subcommittee, challenged the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) to provide testimony on a host of issues, ranging from the level of broadband penetration in the United States to how the Universal Service Fund (USF) is collected.
Although the FCC hearing scheduled for Feb. 15th was canceled due to the death of Committee member Ron Norwood (R-GA), the commissioners provided pre-hearing answers to the questions Dingell put forth.
FCC chair Kevin Martin claimed that broadband penetration across the United States was constantly increasing, from 9 million in 2001 to 65 million today.
"That's nearly six times as many high-speed lines as when I joined the commission," Martin said. Martin also cited data from the Pew research center that found broadband use jumping from 60 million in 2005 to 84 million in 2006.
However, the Pew findings indicated that 45 percent of overall American households had broadband Internet access, out of a nation of 300 million.
The US ranked 21st among developed nations for broadband access, according to the International Telecommunications Union.
The data the FCC uses to measure broadband penetration has also been frequently criticized as inaccurate, such as using subscriber ZIP codes to measure access instead of where development has actually taken place.
The slow pace of nationwide broadband penetration is often attributed to the costs of building infrastructure across a nation as large as the U.S., as well as the desire of telecommunication companies to cater to richer client groups in clustered urban areas.
Supporters of net neutrality have challenged the desire of telecom companies to "redline" poor areas out of broadband development altogether.
AT&T-Bellsouth;
Martin and fellow Commissioner Deborah Tate were also challenged by Dingell to explain their comments on the approval of the AT&T-BellSouth; Merger.
AT&T; offered numerous concessions to push the merger forward, including a promise to maintain net neutrality on its basic Internet services for up to thirty months.
Martin and Tate, both Republicans who went along with concessions grudgingly, said that they would not allow the concessions to guide future decisions in related matters, claiming that a "minority" of Commissioners -- in this case, Democratic members Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps -- should not be allowed to make decisions normally dictated by the majority.
"An industry-wide policy of the Commission must be approved by a majority of the commissioners," Tate said. "While I voted to support the merger, including the voluntarily-agreed to conditions, it is important the conditions not represent the policy of the Commission with regard to the broader industry."
FTC Wants Everyone To Get Along
Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) convened a two-day conference on "Broadband Connectivity Competition Policy."
FTC Chair Deborah Platt Majoras, a Republican who has been critical of net neutrality issues in the past, continued to evince a resistance to regulation, claiming "market solutions" would solve any difficulties.
Fellow commissioner Jon Leibowitz said that more constructive dialogue was necessary, and that participants in the debate "[listened] to the other side sort of just enough to mock it."
Participants in the forum included representatives from telecom giants such as Verizon and Cisco, consumer groups such as Media Access Project, and lobby groups like the anti-net neutrality Hands Off The Internet. Hands Off's co-chairman Christopher Wolf used his testimony to claim there was "zero evidence of harm to consumers or competition to warrant such regulation."
"[C]ompetitive conditions in the market for broadband access will protect consumers from the hypothetical harm theorized by net neutrality proponents," Wolf said.
Media Access Project's Harold Feld bemoaned the panel makeup, saying it was dominated by industry apologists.
"So the pro and con industry reps and pro and con academics each have their own panel, but the "consumers" (i.e., us regular folks actually using broadband) have to share "our" panel with two industry reps and two academics," he said on his blog.
