Acts of Commission
The FCC has been generating a fair amount of press lately. Much of what the FCC involves itself with, the internet and radio, surround me and touch me daily. But this is technical and legal public policy. It's not clear how well these issues can be followed by laymen. This is something that I am reminded of often by my sister Ann who is a lawyer in the FCC General Councils office. So I'll follow it the way I follow all other things the media and newspapers tell me about that I do not think I will experience directly until they have already changed the world I live in. What is the FCC up to with Julius Genachowski as the new chairman? A rhetorical question, I lay out tea leaves regardless. There is the legacy of previous administration's schizophrenic approach to libertarianism and enforcing the social conservative's nanny state. Mergers and nothing that offends the sensibilities of the new right was the way forward then. Guarding sensitivities; however, is a pantheistic religion, There will be no turning that ship around anytime soon. As well arguments against market and media consolidation will have to be built again entirely anew, as they were utterly vanquished by Powell and Martin.
Numerous as these issues are there are some broad outlines to the FCC's intent. The first of these is to shore up a barely-there commitment to the public on net neutrality Hurdles remain as FCC ponders Internet data rules. This is a question of constituency - the FCCs attention caught more by Google on one hand and ATT or Verizon on the other, than with consumer advocacy groups like
Free Press | Media reform through education, organizing and advocacy or even an academic concern like the
Center for Democracy and Technology.
The FCC now has a new rule set to guide them and even if it seems somewhat of an under-reach (GOP to FCC: analysis first, then net neutrality rules - maybe - Ars Technica)
for Net Neutrality as a public rights issue, Chairman Genachowski at least got a unanimous vote from the whole commission on it
Post Tech - FCC moves forward on net neutrality rule-making in unanimous vote. There are six rules as Ars Technica lays it out
FCC proposes network neutrality rules (and big exemptions) - Ars Technica The FCC is already committed, for a few years now to a group of rules for the internet. Ones that in theory they have been committed to for the entire telephony era. With the world wide web the public has the ability to view any matter and use any software application to set up or view matter as long as it crosses with no existing law. Add to that, software, consumer communication and computing devices and the expectation that there will be competition to supply these things in an open and fully disclosed manner to the consumer. Things do what they say they do and do nothing they don't say they do. That last point is where the caveats begin. The FCC's rule set ends by including the potential right to control all things unlawful or unreasonable to a telecomm company. The exceptions seemed designed to include all content that cannot prove itself to be rightfully in motion, and as adjunct to that, the Telecomm companies reserve the right to perform examinations of all content so that they may know this. There is among the large corporations
AT&T and astroturf: is "following the money" enough? - Ars Technica and national security organizations that run the the information superhighway, a certain fear of an unexamined net life. In the current tangle of platforms and suppliers the FCC ought to be careful to ensure that the same rules apply to any business offering similar services. If Google is going to quack like a duck, then it is a duck regardless Is AT&T targeting Google Voice to stop "traffic pumping"? - Ars Technica. Any organization that sets itself up to carry traffic (obtains a public charter to do so) should/ought/must carry all traffic that presents itself Common carrier - Wikipedia. Unless there will be 6 to a dozen lines in and out of every household with ability to switch between them at will moment to moment carriers ought to be neutral as to content over the line as were telephones. The Cape May ferry doesn't ask why you want to be in New Jersey or what you might be doing in Delaware, though they may charge against car truck or pedestrian.
The other and perhaps greater concern of the FCC is Broadband Rollout. Its been no secret that this has been slow that the US was late moving off dial-up, and much US broadband is only medium internet. What is true broad band? DSL, cable, fiber-optic etc. what mip, what level of ubiquity?. Where does it lie? In the first, middle, or last mile.
To answer these question the FCC commission a report from Harvard's
Berkman Center:
Berkman Center broadband study for FCC available for public comment. It specifically tries to identify what incentives and policy structures will move us forward. One critical consideration lurking in the background is that mobile and 3g and 4g networks by their very nature pull more bandwidth that the relative passivity of the stationary http protocol. Supporting these will consume very large amounts of radio spectrum. The Berkman report starts with some comparisons with other countries. In terms of raw speed, availability to the public, and pricing of true broadband a dozen or more nations rank ahead of the US. The prime considerations that can be identified for this are the decisions of most other nations to keep open access regulations in place, and to make a genuine and rigorous attempts to find the correct level and place for public infrastructure investment. As the report tries to emphasis this is not just entertainment time, diversion. This is the US's the ability to possess information in a timely and effective fashion. This is the way of commerce, invitation to the club of the future. If we fail this benchmark test we move toward the center of of this century as second tier nation.
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