The FCC goes ahead with its plan to control Web pricing.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler went ahead with his proposal on Thursday to give his agency the power to decide whether the terms and prices of broadband Internet services are “reasonable.” That’s bad enough as political discretion, but according to dissenting Commissioner Ajit Pai, regulators from every state will also be able to get into the act.Mr. Wheeler’s goal is to satisfy the “net neutrality” supporters demanding that every broadband customer receive the same deal, no matter how much bandwidth they consume. Backed by two other Democrats, Mr. Wheeler said he prefers the “reasonable” pricing standard. But he also suggested another, even worse option to regulate broadband prices: reclassifying Internet connections as “telecommunications services.”
For two decades Congress has wisely refused to give the FCC the same power over the Internet that it holds over the telephone system. And for two decades the Internet has enabled a gusher of creativity that was unimaginable over a century of regulated telephony. Mr. Wheeler’s brainstorm to change all this is simply to pretend the Internet is a phone network.
This would apply to today’s broadband networks common-carrier rules that were designed for monopoly telephone companies—and created decades before the inventors of smart phones and social media were even born. Since this designation would automatically impose myriad obligations that have nothing to do with current customer needs—and that many modern firms could not possibly fulfill—the commission would then have to issue a flurry of exemptions (“forbearance” in FCC parlance) to prevent chaos in the market for Internet connections.
“The US has lost the moral authority to talk about a free and open internet,” By Richard Waters in San Francisco
A meeting in Brazil this week will reveal whether Washington has succeeded in preventing international anger over the Edward Snowden revelations clouding discussions about future governance of the internet.
São Paulo is to host a two-day international meeting, starting on Wednesday, called by Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, one of the international leaders who was a target of US surveillance.
International unrest over US and British internet surveillance has weakened Washington’s ability to shape the debate about the internet’s future, according to people involved in the process.
“The US has lost the moral authority to talk about a free and open internet,” said a former senior US government official.
The São Paulo meeting had the potential to become deeply political and expose rifts between countries over future control of the internet, said Greg Shatan, a partner at law firm Reed Smith in Washington. “It was called under extraordinary circumstances, it’s a reaction to a perceived crisis,” he said.
The US made a highly symbolic gesture last month in an attempt to defuse the situation.
In a move that had long been urged by Brussels, Washington said it planned to give up its last remaining direct role in controlling the internet. This involves checking the accuracy of changes to internet addressing made by ICANN, the international body that oversees the system. Though a limited and highly technical function, this has long been a focus for international discontent at US influence over the internet.
MARCH 14, 2014, 11:44 PM
BY HUGH MORLEY
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD
A battle over broadband Internet access is pitting Verizon New Jersey and the state Board of Public Utilities against town officials, a union and public interest groups that say the company hasn’t fulfilled its promise to provide statewide service despite millions of dollars in rate increases aimed at funding the project.
A deal struck between the state and Verizon more than 20 years ago — dubbed Opportunity New Jersey — was heralded as a plan to make the state one of the most wired in the nation, financed in part by a dollar-a-month surcharge on customers’ phone bills that some say has brought in billions. The deal, announced in 1993, also allowed the company looser regulatory oversight than it would otherwise have.
But 21 years later — four years beyond the project’s 2010 deadline — portions of the state remain unserved, and the Board of Public Utilities is about to sign off on an agreement that would modify some requirements of the original deal, including allowing the company to provide only high-speed wireless Internet in some areas.
The question of the company’s compliance with the deal came under scrutiny after officials in two towns, Greenwich and Stow Creek, in Cumberland County, complained to the state BPU about poor phone service and their lack of access to broadband.
U.S. to relinquish remaining control over the Internet
By Craig Timberg, Published: March 14
U.S. officials announced plans Friday to relinquish federal government control over the administration of the Internet, a move that pleased international critics but alarmed some business leaders and others who rely on the smooth functioning of the Web.
Pressure to let go of the final vestiges of U.S. authority over the system of Web addresses and domain names that organize the Internet has been building for more than a decade and was supercharged by the backlash last year to revelations about National Security Agency surveillance.
The change would end the long-running contract between the Commerce Department and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a California-based nonprofit group. That contract is set to expire next year but could be extended if the transition plan is not complete.
“We look forward to ICANN convening stakeholders across the global Internet community to craft an appropriate transition plan,” Lawrence E. Strickling, assistant secretary of commerce for communications and information, said in a statement.
The announcement received a passionate response, with some groups quickly embracing the change and others blasting it.
In a statement, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) called the move “consistent with other efforts the U.S. and our allies are making to promote a free and open Internet, and to preserve and advance the current multi-stakeholder model of global Internet governance.”
But former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) tweeted: “What is the global internet community that Obama wants to turn the internet over to? This risks foreign dictatorships defining the internet.”
The practical consequences of the decision were harder to immediately discern, especially with the details of the transition not yet clear. Politically, the move could alleviate rising global concerns that the United States essentially controls the Web and takes advantage of its oversight position to help spy on the rest of the world.
