Despite the tightening tension surrounding the net neutrality debate, the hearing on the topic (webcast and written testimonies can be found here) held by the Senate Commerce Committee today was a restrained, thoughtful and actually productive examination of this hot-button issue.
Testimony by industry representatives and academics, as well as statements by Committee members, broke down along the following lines:
1. Network providers need incentives to continue investing in the networks and any mandatory network neutrality rules will derail those incentives.
2. Absent some form of network neutrality regulation, network providers will implement policies that jeopardize a free and open Internet and will snuff out innovation in new content and applications offerings.
3. Other solutions to this conundrum exist, namely jump-starting competition to the current cable-telco duopoly or adopting policies that ensure that all consumers receive abundant bandwidth so that broadband providers can’t thwart the rise of new services.
Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT) said it best when he expressed his own uncertainty about how to approach this problem. On the one hand, he said, there is “the belief that there should be unfettered access or discrimination…the Internet should remain open to all users.” But “at the same time we must balance a company’s interest to manage its own [business]…therein lies the challenge. How do we strike a balance?”
Senator John Ensign (R-NV), who has introduced a bill that favors broadband providers’ rights to block access to content, said “our regulations and our laws need to be modernized to create more incentives for companies to invest so that we have those broadband networks that are higher quality and are faster and give consumers more competition. Everybody agrees that we want the Internet to be free…but we also have to recognize that there is a balance.”
The Committee allowed Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) to make a statement before the witnesses testified (Wyden is a former member of the committee). Wyden, a pro-consumer legislator, said that “In my view there are powerful interests that own the access to the pipes and the net that want to break that [free and unfettered access].” He also advocated that all bits transmitted across the Internet be treated equally “so that no bit is treated better than another one” and that broadband providers be prevented from creating private networks that “allow companies to give consumers better access than they can get generally,” meaning that a two-tiered Internet structure should be banned.
Google’s Internet “evangelist” Vint Cerf pointed out that the Internet was designed from the ground up so that no one would have centralized control and that all Internet standards are “published, open and global.” The fundamental problem is that “the challenge we have is that there isn’t enough competition in the broadband world,” Cerf said, and without that, innovative upstarts won’t stand a chance without net neutrality. “We must preserve neutrality in this system in order to allow new Googles, new Yahoos and new Amazons to form.”
US Telecom CEO Walter McCormick said that there is no problem today even without laws mandating net neutrality. “Consumers aren’t experiencing problems today and there isn’t any statute in place,” he said. Moreover, the phone companies have no intention of interfering with customers’ access to content or applications. “We will not block, impair or degrade content, applications or services,” McCormick said.
Vonage CEO Jeff Citron drew an analogy between electricity and Internet connectivity, saying that just as electricity providers don’t care what you do with the power they supply consumers, so should network providers not care about how customers use Internet bandwidth. “Imagine if the electric company could dictate which toaster you can plug into the wall,” he said.
Citron also said that his VoIP company is particularly at risk without net neutrality rules given that the phone companies view Vonage as a real threat to their core voice business. “Major phone companies have suggested that our service isn’t going to work very well if we don’t pay them a fee.”
National Cable & Telecommunications CEO Kyle McSlarrow urged a conservative approach, arguing that despite its explosive growth, Internet service is a relatively immature market. “A very heavy burden should be placed on those who would have the government intervene for the first time,” McSlarrow said.
Comptel CEO Earl Comstock said “the Internet was built on a framework of common carriage…these are all critical elements that are not being addressed by the FCC today in their network neutrality program.”
Progress and Freedom Foundation Fellow Kyle Dixon warned that “imposing a network neutrality mandate would be neither simple nor harmless” and would further erode the possibility of ever mounting facilities-based broadband competition. “A network neutrality mandate would do nothing to increase competition,” he said. “By imposing costs..a network neutrality mandate would undermine incentives to invest in new broadband networks.”
Stanford Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig also urged a conservative approach, but unlike NCTA’s McSlarrow, Lessig favors net neutrality requirements and argues that they are not new requirements at all. “It’s crazy to suggest that the ideas we are talking about today are new. They have been part of telecommunications law for at least the last forty years. It is under these principles that the Internet evolved,” Lessig said.
Lessig warned that the telcos’ plans endanger the growth of the Internet. “The leaders of Verizon and the leaders of AT&T would radically reduce competition in applications and content on the Internet. As they set up fast lanes on the Internet, the only companies that could afford access are the Googles and the Yahoos…companies that have already made a success on the Internet. This restriction in competition would fundamentally weaken the growth in the Internet.”
Like Lessig, Georgetown University economist Gregory Sidak believes that the issues posed by network neutrality are not new but well-known to those who study telecommunications. “It’s clear to me that economics understands the distinctive costs and demand characteristics of telecommunications networks better than any industry that I can think of,” he said.
But unlike Lessig, Sidak believes there is nothing wrong in having network providers charge fees to Google, Yahoo or other Internet services. “There is no acceptable theory that consumers should pay all the costs…and providers that use that network pay nothing.”
Gary Bakula, Vice President for External Affairs at Internet2, said that the Internet2 consortium has discovered that the best way to manage the network for maximum benefits is to simply give customers a lot of bandwidth. “We started out prioritizing certain bits,” Bakula said, “but all of our research led to the conclusion that it was simply far more cost-effective to provide more benefits.” Internet2 would like to see Congress set a national goal of 100 Mbps symmetrical bandwidth in five years and one gigabit symmetrical bandwidth within ten years.
Cynthia Brumfield at 12:17 PM|Comments(0)
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