PK: Net Neutrality Issue Comes Around

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: In the Know -- February 16, 2006
Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 11:21:53 -0500 (EST)
From: Public Knowledge <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]

****************************************************
 In the Know -- a bimonthly Public Knowledge update
****************************************************

February 16, 2006

Contents:

* We Finally Get to Testify -- on Video Franchising
* PK Issues Major Net Neutrality Study
* Senate Panel Takes Up Net Neutrality


=============================================================
 PK Endorses Net Neutrality Trade for Streamlined Franchises
=============================================================

The official topic of the Senate Commerce Committee hearing on
Feb. 15 was whether telephone companies should have an easier
path to entering the video business than did cable companies have
had over the years.  Our unofficial topic, however, was network
neutrality.

For decades, cable companies had to negotiate with more than
30,000 local franchising authorities -- cities, towns and
counties -- to obtain a franchise to offer their program
services.  Telephone companies want an easier way in -- with a
one fell swoop national franchise.  PK was asked to testify on
this issue, and we were glad to do so because we believe in
competition in the market, and a national franchise could
introduce competition more quickly than following the old cable
trail around the country.

PK is not advocating that telephone companies be given a national
franchise with no corresponding responsibilities.  Local
governments should still have control over their rights-of-way
and should still be compensated for the grant of the franchise. 
We also suggested that there be adequate capacity on new systems
for local public, educational and government uses.

Our biggest suggestion, however, is that Congress, in allowing
the telephone companies to bypass the local franchise process,
should also require Net Neutrality, which ensures that those same
companies make their broadband networks available to all
applications, content and service providers on a
non-discriminatory basis. A national franchise is a grant of
extraordinary regulatory relief and cost savings for the
telephone companies, and PK thinks that Net Neutrality isn't too
big a trade-off for the large telephone companies to make.  The
same telco advanced network that brings video into customers'
homes also carries high-speed Internet services, and Congress
would be making a mistake to deal with one aspect of the service
but not the other.

This hearing on video franchising had been postponed from Jan.
31. We weren't invited for the Senate panel's Jan. 7 Net
Neutrality hearing.  Our testimony yesterday showed the issue of
video is much larger than simply cable programming, and several
senators on the Committee appeared to agree.

Our news release on video franchising is here:
 
http://www.publicknowledge.org/pressroom/releases/pressrelease.2006-02-14.2918274635

Our full testimony is here:
 
http://www.publicknowledge.org/news/testimony/gbsohn-testimony-20060215

The Net Neutrality theme continues...


=================================================================
 PK Net Neutrality Study Released;  Legislative Changes Proposed
=================================================================

PK on February 6th released a major, comprehensive study of the
controversial Net Neutrality issue, which suggested there is a
relatively simple way to maintain the open character of the
Internet without resorting to a cumbersome regulatory regime.  We
look at Net Neutrality as an issue through the lens of potential
discrimination against service providers.  If service providers
suffer discrimination in their offerings, then customers will
eventually be deprived of choice of services and innovations,
which would result in a degraded service for consumers

On today's Internet, all service providers have equal access to
consumers, in a framework left over from the dial-up days when
telephone companies were under "common carrier" regulation.  Now,
however, as the Internet moves to high speed broadband, the
situation has changed because the FCC has deregulated both
telephone-company high-speed services and cable modem service. 
There are no rules, and we want to make certain that the Internet
we have today doesn't become subject to the control of network
operators in the future.  We don't think it's in the spirit of
the free and open Internet we know that network operators can
give preferential treatment to services in which they have a
financial interest or to companies with which they cut special
deals

Our report, "Good Fences Make Bad Broadband:  Preserving an Open
Internet Through Net Neutrality," was released one day before the
Senate Commerce Committee held its hearing on the issue. Authored
by John Windhausen, Jr., our extremely knowledgeable telecom
consultant, the report has four parts.  First, it provides a nice
reference guide to Net Neutrality, including defining some of the
terms, comparing the policy positions of various parties involved
in the debate, and looking at existing cases of the type of
discrimination by network providers that we want to eliminate in
the future.  Second, the report makes the case for Net
Neutrality, and finds that an open Internet is more useful and
beneficial to society than one in which network operators like
telephone and cable companies act as gatekeepers.  In the third
section, we take a look at some of the arguments the network
companies make against Net Neutrality, and tell you why we
disagree with them, and where their analysis has gone wrong.

Finally, we propose some legislative language to address the
problem.  In short, we don't think there is a need for a vast new
regulatory scheme.  We think that a simple, complaint-driven
process will work fine, provided the burden is on the network
operators to prove they are not discriminating against a service
provider.

You can find the report here:
 
http://www.publicknowledge.org/content/papers/pk-net-neutrality-whitep-20060206


==========================================
 Net Neutrality Subject of Senate Hearing
==========================================

The Senate Commerce Committee was the cause of much of the
activity surrounding net neutrality (including the release of our
report), by holding a hearing on the issue on February 7th. 
Several witnesses came out with a strong Net Neutrality message
that appeared to be getting through to at least some of the
senators.  Sen. Byron Dorgan, (D-N.D.), delivered some strong
remarks in opposition to the claims of some telephone companies
that companies like Google are freeloading on telco networks.  He
said that, contrary to the telco claims, "it is not a free lunch
for any one of the content providers" because consumers are
paying for Internet access every month.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a former Commerce Committee member,
testified that it would be a "fundamental shift in the way the
Internet has worked and prospered" if network operators are
allowed to cut "sweetheart arrangements" with some content
companies.  Wyden said he will introduce legislation that would
maintain the open culture of today's Internet.

Vint Cerf from Google, Jeffrey Citron from Vonage, Earl Comstock
from CompTel/ALTS (the trade association representing competitive
local telephone companies), Gary Bachula from Educause and PK
Board Member Lawrence Lessig from Stanford Law School all gave
some variation on the theme of the importance of keeping the
Internet open to innovation.  Cerf noted that other countries,
particularly the U.K., maintain open broadband networks for
transport even though the main broadband provider, British
Telecom, offers its own advanced services.  Lessig noted that
every telecom network around the world has operated on an
openness principle -- the same principle that has governed U.S.
telecom networks for 40 years.  He called proposals to allow
greater control by network operators "a radical change in the
regulatory environment."

Bachula said that network companies should focus on providing
consumers with "an abundance of bandwidth," and any quality
concerns would be taken care of.  He said a 100 mbps service to
the desktop is possible, a far cry from the 1.5 mbps we get now. 
With that data speed, Bachula said, the Internet could remain
open, inexpensive and simple, which is better than "complex,
expensive and closed."

Hearing testimony and video of the hearing is here:
  http://commerce.senate.gov/hearings/witnesslist.cfm?id=1705


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Briefly:   The latest report from the National Institutes of
Health on the public access program shows, once again, that the
voluntary approach to having researchers post their papers online
isn't working.  Between May 2, 2005 and Dec. 31, 2005, a grand
total of 1,636 peer-reviewed articles were posted to the PubMed
Central site.  The posted articles are 3.8 percent of the total
of about 43,000 eligible articles.  Nine of the 11 non-NIH
members of the agency's advisory group recommended that the
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continue to work with researchers, journal publishers and others
to improve public access.  The report is here:
  http://publicaccess.nih.gov/Final_Report_20060201.pdf


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