One of the best journalists following the Congressional push to reform the nation’s telecom laws is the National Journal’s Drew Clark. Last week, Drew drafted an opus of sorts on net neutrality and it’s one worth reading.
It starts with the infamous “they’re my pipes” Business Week interview with AT&T (then SBC) CEO Ed Whitacre.
Sometimes it seems that Ed Whitacre has a hard time controlling the words that come out of his mouth.
The piece is an inside-baseball look at how Whitacre’s interview crystallized the fighting lines among all the parties involved in the legislative rewrite effort. The Whitacre interview forced the various layers to choose sides.
Cisco, Corning, and other equipment manufacturers in the old High Tech Broadband Coalition agreed that Congress should allow the FCC to enforce its four connectivity principles, but do nothing further.
Drew provides a road-map for what can be very confusing alliances, astroturf organizations and schisms among the various industry groups. My favorite passage has to do with one pro-net neutrality group that has morphed into many identities.
The first is the coalition that coalesced after Whitacre’s remarks — a group that has changed its name from the “Group of Six” to the “Net Neutrality Coalition,” to “Don’t Mess With the Net” to “It’s Your Net,” before settling on the revealing “It’s Our Net” in April. The group is run out of Qorvis Communications, with its lobbying efforts headed by Covington & Burling lawyer Gerard Waldron, a former Markey aide.
Cynthia Brumfield at 9:35 AM|Comments(0)
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