Massive telecom companies control virtually all of our voice and internet communications these days—and new evidence shows a near-total lack of commitment to our democracy. AT&T has proposed filtering all content traveling on its network. Verizon tried initially to block NARAL's pro-choice text messages. Most telecom companies are fighting net neutrality. Can democracy survive an assault by those who control the tubes?
The panel members don't include anyone with any experience managing or operating an actual telecom network, but instead includes two people who have repeatedly demonstrated not only an ignorance of telecom law, technology, and policy, but who have misrepresented facts and failed to engage with the arguments of their critics, Matt Stoller and Timothy Karr (see posts on this blog in the "net neutrality" category). The closest person to a representative of a telecom is Michael Kieschnick of Working Assets, a company that is a reseller of long distance and wireless service on Sprint's network.
I agree with many of their positions--I don't think ISPs should be allowed to block websites on the basis of disagreement with content. I think ISPs should be transparent about their network management processes and filtering. Where I disagree with them is that they advocate that the FCC step in to regulate the Internet in a way that it has never had authority to do so before, and demand that network operators not be allowed to implement classes of service with different rates of charges, or even usage caps. Art Brodsky expresses the point which has also been made by Robb Topolsky of Public Knowledge, Timothy Karr of Free Press, and Matt Stoller:
In the name of "network management," some companies want to throttle down the use of legal applications, like BitTorrent which may, coincidentally, provide competition in entertainment programming. They want to impose usage caps across the board on all customers which would stifle innovation and curb the use of video (there's that anti-competitive meme again) without actually solving the problem of the so-called "bandwidth hogs." The way caps are being discussed now, they would only lead to higher prices and less usage for an industry that already charges more for less than most broadband providers around the world. Parts of our broadband industry may be the only sector in the world that wants to cut down the amount of its product it wants customers to use.
Brodsky's last sentence is clearly false--broadband is like a fixed-price all-you-can-eat buffet. All businesses want to maximize their profits by maximizing revenue and minimizing costs. When bandwidth is sold at a fixed cost in unlimited amounts, where a small number of users are consuming the majority of the service, it's in the business's interest to restrict those users or charge them more for what they consume in order to satisfy the rest in a cost-effective manner. The options are few--you can either restrict the "bandwidth hogs" in some way, charge them more so that they pay for what they use, or raise the price for everyone. These guys seem to advocate the latter approach, while I'm in favor of allowing all the options to be used in a competitive market. Where I disagree with Comcast's approach in issuing RST packets to block BitTorrent traffic is not that they did it, but that they were not transparent about what they were doing (and apparently didn't quite get it quite right--it should not have completely broken BitTorrent, but only slowed it down).
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