Category Archives: Forbearance

2014 Year in Review…

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2014 provided fertile soil for those interested in policy research. So with New Years rapidly approaching, I want to uphold tradition and use our last blog post of the year to highlight what we at the Phoenix Center thought to be the most interesting policy issues of 2014 and to provide some select examples of where we believed we added constructively to the debate. Spectrum Availability and Allocation While spectrum policy is always complex, the debate again boiled down to the fundamental questions: how do we free up more spectrum; and once we do, how do we allocate it? For Continue Reading »

Tariffing the Internet: A Response to Harold Feld (Part Deux)…

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On October 2, 2014, Harold Feld of Public Knowledge defiantly declared that net neutrality was not about a “terminating service” provided by broadband providers to edge providers, but rather it’s about the regulation of retail broadband service.  His position on this matter was unequivocal and characteristically bumptious.  Harold’s blog was, in part, a response to my paper, Tariffing Internet Termination:  Pricing Implications of Classifying Broadband as a Title II Telecommunications Service, in which Larry Spiwak and I detailed why the termination market was the relevant market for net neutrality regulation (see Larry’s summary here).  Ignoring the plain text of the Continue Reading »

Mr. Wheeler Agrees: It’s The “Termination Market”…

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Last Friday, the Wall Street Journal provided a peek at Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler’s latest plan for net neutrality.  Under the reported plan, the Chairman intends to divide the two-sided broadband market into its components—a retail and a termination service—and then reclassify the termination service as a Title II common carrier telecommunications service but leave retail services as a mostly unregulated Title I information service. As the Journal’s article states, The plan now under consideration would separate broadband into two distinct services: a retail one, in which consumers would pay broadband providers for Internet access; and a back-end Continue Reading »

Title II Reclassification and the Price Regulation of Retail Broadband Services…

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Last month, Larry Spiwak and I published a paper entitled Tariffing the Internet: Pricing Implications of Classifying Broadband as a Title II Telecommunications Service in which we outlined how the reclassification of broadband as a Title II telecommunications service would work in practice. (See Larry’s Op-Ed for a condensed version.) Since net neutrality seems aimed at prohibiting “paid prioritization,” we concluded that reclassification must lead to a positively-priced and tariffed termination service. That is, edge providers will be required to pay broadband providers to terminate their traffic. Today, they do not. No one has yet to make any reasonable argument Continue Reading »

The Problems With Henry Waxman’s “Hybrid” Legal Theory…

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Last week, Representative Henry Waxman—the ranking Democrat on the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee—wrote a letter to Federal Communications Chairman Tom Wheeler where he proposed a new and quite peculiar “hybrid” legal theory to support aggressive new Open Internet Rules.  Under Mr. Waxman’s three-step theory, the FCC would first reclassify broadband Internet access as a Title II common carrier telecommunications service.  Next, Mr. Waxman would have the Commission use its authority under Section 10 to forbear from nearly all of Title II—including even Section 201 (requiring “just and reasonable” rates) and Section 202 (prohibiting “unreasonable discrimination”). Finally, having dispensed Continue Reading »

Tariffing the Internet: A Response to Harold Feld…

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Last month, Larry Spiwak and I released a paper entitled Tariffing the Internet: Pricing Implications of Classifying Broadband as a Title II Telecommunications Service. In this paper (and companion op-ed), we set out to answer a critical question—how exactly does reclassifying broadband as a Title II, common-carrier telecommunications service protect the Open Internet?  Despite the millions of comments filed in the FCC’s Open Internet Docket, this most basic question has yet to be asked much less answered.  If the Commission does reclassify, then the agency must design, implement and administer a particular set of rules that achieves the desired goal Continue Reading »

An Epiphany at Free Press on Reclassification?

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Yesterday, the Phoenix Center held a Teleforum to present our paper Tariffing the Internet: Pricing Implications of Classifying Broadband as a Title II Telecommunications Service and to discuss its implications with a series of experts. (We hope to post the video of the event on the Phoenix Center’s Phoenix Center’s YouTube Channel shortly.)  To summarize the paper, we show that if the Federal Communications Commission uses Title II common carrier telecommunications regulations to protect the “Open Internet,” then all edge providers (e.g., Google, Netflix, and your personal website) will be required to make direct payments to Broadband Service Providers (“BSPs” Continue Reading »

The FCC Can’t Use Section 706 to Preempt State Laws Prohibiting Municipal Broadband…

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Ten years ago, the United States Supreme Court held in Nixon v. Missouri Municipal League that the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) may not use its authority under Section 253 of the Communications Act to preempt state laws which restrict or prohibit municipal broadband deployment.  Despite this defeat, proponents of municipal broadband have spent the last decade trying to find an alternative legal theory and, with the D.C. Circuit’s recent ruling in Verizon v. FCC, believe they now may have finally found one—namely, the FCC’s new-found authority in Section 706(a) of the Communications Act.  Section 706(a) states that the agency may Continue Reading »

A Fresh Analytical Start at the FCC…

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The Federal Communications Commission is at a crossroads.  Burdened with implementing laws designed for a market structure of a bygone era—and with little prospect of a comprehensive legislative update on the horizon—incoming FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler faces a daunting task to adapt and modernize the agency’s approach to regulation so that we can remove, in President Obama’s words, those rules which have “outlived their usefulness.”  Equally as important, Mr. Wheeler has the related and no less daunting task of re-establishing the FCC’s credibility with the industry, Capitol Hill, the courts and (most importantly) the public as the “expert” agency which Continue Reading »