Net Neutrality 10-15-2006

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FCC Stalled on AT&T-BellSouth Merger Vote

The . . . special [FCC] Commission meeting slated for [Oct. 13] to vote on the AT&T-BellSouth merger didn’t take place. Chairman Kevin Martin . . . is presumably still negotiating with Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps, the two Democrats who want conditions placed on the merger.

The two commissioners asked for a delay so that they could study the last-minute proposal submitted by AT&T yesterday that would impose some conditions on the company before it can absorb BellSouth.

[ . . . ]

Update: Chairman Kevin Martin has agreed to postpone the vote until a November 3 meeting. He also agreed to put AT&T’s last-minute conditions out for public comment.

The conditions that AT&T has proposed are quite interesting. In an odd nod to net neutrality, AT&T seemingly agreed to offer a two-year period when onsumers “could surf anywhere on the Internet and use any legal applications with the high-speed service.”

AT&T’s proposed conditions, released Friday, included freezing some wholesale prices for access to its networks for 30 months, offering high-speed Internet access to all homes in its 22-state home territory by 2008 and a pledge not to ask the FCC to lift rules for network access by rivals for 30 months.

The company raised the possibility of a condition addressing consumers’ access to Internet content, an issue known as Net neutrality. It agreed to a two-year FCC condition for its last acquisition, guaranteeing customers could surf anywhere on the Internet and use any legal applications with the high-speed service.

I haven’t seen the conditions, but seriously, AT&T can’t actually be saying that consumers are free to roam the Internet for only two more years, can it? What happens when the two year clock runs out?
[ . . . ]
Update: AT&T issued a statement late this afternoon attempting to minimize the delay. . . . AT&T also said it is open to discussing “reasonable conditions on the merger in order to obtain unanimous approval.”

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 10-14-2006

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DOJ Rubberstamps Massive Telecom Merger by Matt Stoller

This is stunning news. The Justice Department has OK’d, with a simple press release, a massive merger between Bellsouth and AT&T with no conditions and without a consent decree or judicial review, effectively reconstituting much of the old AT&T monopoly. The new AT&T will control nearly half of the landlines in the country, and the CEO of AT&T is already on record essentially saying he’s going to get rid of net neutrality.

Over the past decade, there has been a wave of telecom mergers, and these have concentrated the telecommunications business quite radically. Prior to a merger, the DOJ usually goes through with consent decree in which it describes possible concerns and conditions for a merged entity, which are then reviewed by a judge. That’s what both Republican and Democratic Congressmen asked the Department of Justice to do in this case as well.

[. . . ]

This move, to sidestep judicial review of this merger, is a slap . . . not only at Republicans and Democrats in Congress, it’s also a slap at the Judicial branch, which the DOJ has stripped of power, because judges have shown an unwillingness to accept the idea that concentrating power like this has no anticompetitive effects.

The last check on this merger is the FCC, which may make its decision tomorrow. The FCC needs to include net neutrality provisions as part of the merger conditions, or else AT&T is going to begin its massive merger and planned capital expenditures with the understand that it can discriminate against content. Write the FCC using this tool provided by Freepress. You can find out a lot more about the AT&T-Bellsouth merger here: http://www.freepress.net/att/

FCC puts off AT&T-BellSouth merger vote [via freepress]

WASHINGTON - The Federal Communications Commission is putting off for a day its consideration of AT&T Inc.’s proposed takeover of BellSouth Corp., a mega-merger that some government officials want to examine more closely.

An FCC vote is the final major regulatory hurdle facing the $78.5 billion deal that would create the nation’s biggest provider of telephone, wireless and broadband Internet services.

The agency had scheduled the merger vote for its Thursday meeting but decided late Wednesday to postpone the discussion. On Friday, the FCC is to take up the AT&T proposal as well as a controversial issue known as “network neutrality,” which deals with whether Internet service providers must provide equal treatment to all traffic on their networks.

The FCC did not say why it was delaying a vote. “We are committed to evaluating merger applications fairly and in a manner consistent with the public interest,” agency spokesman Clyde Ensslin said in a statement Wednesday night. “We are continuing to work to complete our AT&T and BellSouth merger review in a timely manner.”

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 10-12-2006

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Cable Ties Itself Up in Net Neutrality Knots [via freepress]

The five companies, Advance, Charter, Cablevision, Cox and Insight, told the [Federal Trade] Commission in a Sept. 27 filing their Voice over IP services are at risk because of what the telephone companies might do to thwart competition. The filing noted: “In the head-to-head competition with cable, the ILECs (incumbent local exchange carriers, aka telephone companies), have a powerful weapon – their ability to discriminate against cable’s voice service by imposing unreasonable, costly interconnection requirements. This is clearly the case with AT&T.”

This merger, the cable companies said, “will increase AT&T’s incentives and ability to wield its market power over interconnection against its cable competitions. AT&T has the incentive and ability to discriminate against cable’s voice service to retain its own customers.” The companies want the Commission to impose detailed conditions on the merger which govern interconnection, traffic flow and the like.

[ . . . ]

The sympathy meter drops a few more notches when the cable industry further declines to realize that the “incentive and ability to discriminate” principle they oppose on the part of the telephone companies is the same principle at the heart of Net Neutrality.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 10-09-2006

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Here’s the FCC’s Playbook for Burying Net Neutrality By Art Brodsky [via freepress]

It’s not. Beneath the surface, the reality is that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s planned Notice of Inquiry on Net Neutrality is an audacious triple play with the goals of greasing the largest telecom merger in history, relieving pressure on a key piece of legislation, and burying the Net Neutrality concept for good.

[. . .]

So here’s the setup. The FCC is currently considering AT&T’s $67 billion purchase of BellSouth, the largest merger in history. In similar past mergers, such as SBC’s purchase of AT&T, or Verizon’s purchase of MCI, the Commission has imposed some relatively neutered Net Neutrality conditions for a limited period of time.

[. . .]

Martin’s gambit to make the merger as painless as possible for the companies is to try to take the Net Neutrality issue off the table. The way he will try to do that is with a Notice of Inquiry.

In the arcane world of FCC process, there are basically three levels of action the Commission can take. Most of the time, the Commission employs only two out of three. First, there is a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM). The construct of the NPRM is that the Commission has found a problem that needs a Commission ruling and proposes some solutions. After a public comment proceeding, the Commission then issues the rule. The construct the rule is that the Commission has picked a course of action to follow. Most of the time the Commission adopts its proposed rule, rather than something others might suggest, but you have to go through the drill anyway.

A preliminary step to the NPRM is called the Notice of Inquiry. The construct here is that the Commission is asking whether there is a problem that needs FCC attention. Notices of Inquiry rarely go any farther in the process. They are a device for burying a problem. But this one is tricky, for the political and analytical hazards it poses for Net Neutrality advocates, including FCC Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein.

When the FCC votes on an action, Commissioners can vote for it, vote against it, or concur in part or dissent in part. Because the window dressing on a Notice of Inquiry is that it’s simply asking a question, it’s hard for a Commissioner to vote against issuing one without appearing unreasonable.In this case, it would be hard for Copps or Adelstein to vote against issuing the Inquiry . . . critics will say, the Commission is only “asking questions” and no one can object to that . . .

. . . The telephone companies and cable companies will tell the FCC there’s no problem with Net Neutrality. Those of us who favor reinstating the non-discrimination law will argue that there might not be a current problem because discrimination was until recently illegal, because the telephone and cable companies are on their best behavior while trying to obtain easier entry to the cable business from Congress and because the FCC’s current non-enforceable Net Neutrality principles don’t protect consumers from the telephone and cable companies giving priority to the services in which they have a financial interest . . .

None of our arguments will matter. The FCC, if it says anything, will say there’s no need for a proposed rulemaking because no one has shown a problem exists.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 9-16-2006

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Guess the State and Win a Subsidy: Senate Plays Geography Games in Telecom Bill

Are you good at geography? If so, you may enjoy the small geography quiz buried deep inside of the telecommunications bill now pending in the U.S. Senate. Hidden on page 121 is a paragraph directing the FCC to expand universal service payments to “insular areas, including any insular area that is a State comprised entirely of islands…”

[. . . ]

As it turns out, the list of states covered by this provision is quite short:

1.Hawaii.

And, by total coincidence, a senator from that state — Daniel Inouye — is the co-chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee — which wrote the bill.

[. . . ]

The provision illustrates how far the bill has strayed from a hoped-for focus on eliminating unneeded regulation. At its core, there still is substantial positive reform: streamlining of the video franchising process. But that important change is surrounded by a luau of special interest provisions. . . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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