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Net Neutrality 10-30-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Don’t nix net neutrality

. . . Last year, a Supreme Court ruling and Federal Communications Commission decision declared that the Internet does not fall under existing communication service laws, putting Internet regulation in legal limbo. Since then, cable and telephone companies have been discussing how to profit from this decision. One of their ideas is to create a “multitiered” Internet.
That sound you’re hearing is the death knell of equality, or net neutrality, on the Web. Net neutrality means that after paying for service, everyone can access the Internet as fast as their connection will allow, without artificial handicaps from the Internet provider. . . .

This would give a huge advantage to content providers with deep financial resources, and make it unlikely for upstart ones like Youtube.com to succeed.

Want to know what you can do?
MA Bell Monopoly Versus the Free Internet — Tell the FCC Net Neutrality Is Not Negotiable

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 10-29-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

The Truth Behind America’s Digital Decline

With every passing month, the United States falls further behind the global leaders in broadband Internet access thanks to a combination of market and policy failures. Our markets lack the competition to bring lower prices, higher speeds, and universal access. Our policies lack the imagination and potency to create real change. Meanwhile, Americans pay more money for less service than a dozen other nations. A third of U.S households are still stuck with dial-up, and another third lack Internet access of any kind. Our broadband problem is becoming a crisis.

Yet major telecommunications legislation now moving through Congress lacks a comprehensive vision for how to bring multiple competitive broadband providers to each market offering truly high-capacity connections at affordable prices.

[. . .]

To make matters worse, the Federal Communications Commission seems content to ignore the broadband problem and pretend we are moving forward. While the FCC is crowing about an uptick in 1 megabit per second (Mbps) DSL connections, Japanese consumers are paying the same price for 100 Mbps. How long can we afford to be 100 times slower than the rest of the world?

Want to know what you can do?
MA Bell Monopoly Versus the Free Internet — Tell the FCC Net Neutrality Is Not Negotiable

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 10-25-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Net Neutrality Vital to Creative Artists, CV Tells FCC

. . . What is at stake here is nothing less than the future of the Internet, and whether the future Internet will be open or closed to independent and diverse voices and viewpoints. Not just creative voices – all voices. Will consumers retain the freedom to access any website, as they could when government policies were in place that ensured nondiscriminatory access, or will they be restricted to visiting sites approved by – or in business with – the “gatekeeper” that provides high speed Internet access? As creative media artists, we’ve seen this closed business model now being proposed for the Internet take over both broadcast television and cable television. Been there, done that, and seen that it is extremely harmful to diversity, creativity, and free expression. Let’s keep the Internet a real “level playing field.”

The market power of the proposed combined company over Internet content and services, along with recent regulatory and legislative developments, requires that the Commission attach substantial and enforceable conditions to its approval of the transaction to ensure that the Internet remains that real “level playing field.” The companies’ offer to abide by the FCC’s Broadband Policy Statement for a period of 30 months is not merely insufficient; it thumbs its nose at the American public and this Commission. By definition, approval of this transaction cannot be in the “public interest” if the combined company retains the right to ignore and violate after just 30 months the public interest in net neutrality, as expressed in the Commission’s Policy Statement. . . .

Want to know what you can do?
MA Bell Monopoly Versus the Free Internet — Tell the FCC Net Neutrality Is Not Negotiable

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

MA Bell Monopoly Versus the Free Internet — Tell the FCC Net Neutrality Is Not Negotiable

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AT&T and BellSouth Have Already Said So

I’m not political. I don’t ask people to do things for causes. This not a cause. This is an emergency. The merger was almost approved this week. The AT&T-BellSouth merger hands over incredible power. THE MERGER ESTABLISHES A A DE FACTO MA BELL DSL MONOPOLY IN 23 STATES, that is to say new enterprise would be the principal or the only provider available.

The Judiciary Committee has already approved the deal, avoiding a court review. The FCC came close to letting it go through this week, but postponed their response at the last minute, because of letters from people like us.

We’ve got about two weeks to stop what they’ve already said they will do.

According to the Washington Post:

William L. Smith, chief technology officer for Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp., told reporters and analysts that an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc.

He’s not alone. Ed Whitacre of AT&T told Business Week last fall:

Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain’t going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there’s going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they’re using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?

[via Savetheinternet.com]

Sir Tim Berners-Lee said the following in the New YorkTimes article “Neutrality’ Is New Challenge for Internet Pioneer an Interview on Net Neutrality with Sir Tim Berners-Lee” By JOHN MARKOFF Published: September 27, 2006.

. . . if the United States ends up faltering in its quest for Net neutrality, I think the rest of the world will be horrified, and there will be very strong pressure from other countries who will become a world separate from the U.S., where the Net is neutral. If things go wrong in the States, then I think the result could be that the United States would then have a less-competitive market where content providers could provide a limited selection of all the same old movies to their customers because they have a captive market.

Meanwhile, in other countries, you’d get a much more dynamic and much more competitive market for television over the Internet. So that you’d end up finding that the U.S. would then fall behind and become less competitive until they saw what was going on and fixed it. I just hope we don’t have to go through a dark period, a little dark ages while people experiment with dropping Net neutrality and then, perhaps, put it back.

Tell the FCC Net Neutrality Is Not Negotiable

Since Wednesday, when the Department of Justice gave their blessing to the AT&T BellSouth merger, more than 20,000 people sent letters to the FCC asking for a Net Neutrality condition to be written into the merger.

freepress.com says this above the letter.

Don’t Let Ma Bell Monopolize the Internet
The AT&T and BellSouth merger would resurrect the Ma Bell monopoly that ruled communications for decades. But this new corporate behemoth would no longer control just phone calls. The new AT&T wants to become gatekeepers to all digital media — television, telephone and Internet — at the expense of the free and open Internet that so many Americans rely upon.

Send a letter by clicking the logo below. It takes only seconds.

Stop the Ma Bell Giveaway

I’ve been following this story since March 18, 2006 when I wrote this piece about Doc Searls and Walter Cronkite. This is the first time I have asked anyone to act . . . Now is the time when you need to. One more letter could tilt the balance.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality I
Net Neutrality II

Net Neutrality 10-15-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

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 PAGE

Net Neutrality 10-14-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

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 PAGE