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Net Neutrality 8-28-2006

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Telcos, Net Neutrality and fair business practices

This morning, I received an email from Verizon, concerning my DSL service.
The email alerted me to the fact that the federal tax known as FUSF (Federal Universal Service Fund) was no longer to be collected. Depending upon your level of service, this was a fee of $1.25 or $2.83 per month. This was part of a decision last year by the FCC to stop regulating DSL, therefore eliminating the need for the FUSF fee to be collected. Based upon this, consumers should have expected to see a modest reduction in their monthly bills, due to the elimination of the FUSF.

However, in reading my Verizon DSL email, it appears that they couldn’t bear to pass that reduction on to their customers. Instead, they indicate that . . . In essence, they’ve taken the amount of the tax (which they had to remit to the government) and shifted it into a new line item as a fee.

If people can’t understand why we need Net Neutrality, this is just another example of how the telcos operate and why we can’t let them change the playing field.

Update: Apparently the FCC is not too thrilled with Verizon and BellSouth efforts to mask price increases as fees. Also see comments from TechDirt on the matter.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 8-27-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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

Not so long ago

AT&T used their monopoly over local service (the telephony last mile) to make it impossible for competition to emerge in long distance or the manufacture of equipment.

It was all so complicated that the FCC was completely overpowered — at the antitrust trial before Judge Greene, DOJ called a bunch of former FCC-ers to testify that they couldn’t supervise the Bell System. This wasn’t market failure, this was regulatory failure. Complete inability to cope.

So Judge Greene drove them through discovery and trial with a firm hand, and after 11 months DOJ and AT&T came up with a consent decree. It separated the local telephone part from everything else (putting local service into the hands of seven operating companies made up of 22 former operating companies). It specifically said that those operating companies couldn’t get into offering content, or manufacturing equipment, or operating long distance service — because they couldn’t be trusted not to discriminate in favor of their own stuff. After the decree and the complicated process of splitting up the company, long distance prices plummeted, a vibrant market for equipment emerged, and the internet arrived.

[. . . ]

So where are we now? The seven operating companies crept back into long distance service, got rid of the consent decree (and Judge Greene’s firm hand) in the 1996 Act, manipulated/litigated their way out of allowing competitive local service to emerge, and now …. they’re mostly reconsolidated. We really have two phone companies in the US: Verizon and AT&T.

And they don’t really have competitors for broadband access — just gentle telco/cableco giants. Maybe colluding gentle giants — the gentlest of all.

[. . . ]

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 8-26-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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

Save the Internet

Here are two YouTube videos to check out. Thery’re both short and worth a look.

RE: Save The Internet by KGP
00:16
From: knifegunpen
Views: 1209

Save the Internet! by StuEvo
02:12
From: StuEvo
Views: 293

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 8-25-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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

Welcome to the neutral net

We pointed out the other day that net neutrality fiends want public ownership of the Internet access network. Here’s a report from Broadband News on what that looks like:

Culver City, California was the first Los Angeles municipality to offer the public a free all-access Wi-Fi network. They’re also the first to ban all porn and p2p from that network, according to an announcement made yesterday.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 8-24-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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

Federal Trade Commission examines net neutrality
Move welcomed by consumer groups

“We certainly look forward to the analysis of an agency that exists to protect competition of the broadband market in which 98 percent of customers receive their service from either the telephone company or the cable company, if they have that choice at all,” Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said in an email. “There are no market forces at work here, much as Chairman Majoras wishes there to be.”

The FTC will host a conference, from 6 to 8 November, focusing on protecting consumers in an era of converging technologies, Majoras also announced. The conference, named “Protecting Consumers in the Next Tech-Ade”, will focus on emerging trends, applications, products, services and tech issues in the next decade, she said.

The preliminary agenda can be found here.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 8-23-2006

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FTC Chairman Addresses Issue of “Net Neutrality”

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras today told a meeting of the Progress & Freedom Foundation that she has formed an Internet Access Task Force to examine issues being raised by converging technologies and regulatory developments, and to educate and inform the enforcement, advocacy and education initiatives of the Commission. “I also have asked the Internet Access Task Force to address what is likely the most hotly debated issue in communications, so-called ‘network neutrality,’” she said.

“The FTC’s Internet Access Task Force is looking carefully at the issues raised by calls for network neutrality laws. . . . I urge caution in proceeding on the issue. I . . . question the starting assumption that government regulation, rather than the market itself under existing laws, will provide the best solution to a problem,” Majoras said.

Majoras said there are points that should be considered before enactment of legislation to regulate the Internet, since regulation will have impact “for years to come.”

[. . . ]

“While I am sounding cautionary notes about new legislation, let me make clear that if broadband providers engage in anticompetitive conduct, we will not hesitate to act using our existing authority. But I have to say, thus far, proponents of net neutrality regulation have not come to us to explain where the market is failing or what anticompetitive conduct we should challenge; we are open to hearing from them,” she said.

Majoras also said the FTC will host a conference with “an array of experts from around the world to inform us about what they see as emerging trends, applications, products, services, and issues over the next ten years.” A preliminary agenda for the hearings, named “Protecting Consumers in the Next Tech-Ade,”is being released today. Copies of the agenda can be found at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/workshops/techade/tech-ade_agenda_preliminary.pdf

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE