Restore pro competitive, innovative common sense Net regulations

pangasamaneesh

Revise

Flag

Vote Up

Vote Down

Before Bush & Cheney were in the White House we had 30 + years of common sense, pro consumer, pro competitive Internet regulations banning mega mergers between big ISPs, forcing them to share their infrastructure with smaller ISPs, offer cheap Internet access to smaller ISPs at wholesale prices so they can then resell broadband Internet access cheaply to their own customers -- The Ma Bell system was broken up to create more competition in the emerging broadband Internet access market that was still in its infancy. Our nation's leaders realized Internet would become the future of all media one day and wanted it to be open, competitive and vibrant for users. Large Internet companies had to provide equal, fair, and unfettered access to smaller companies -- so NetZero could buy Internet access from AT&T and resell it to their customers cheaply. The U.S. Congress even passed a law the 1996 Telecommunications Act mandating the broadband Internet access market be kept open and competitive, so there can be universal, affordable access to all Americans. They saw Internet as a public utility -- and a public right -- as soon as the bill was passed AT&T complained that it was unfair that they had to provide affordable Internet access to smaller competitors. They lobbied to reverse the regulations -- what they couldn't convince the courts to undo President Bush did for them in office. There even was a National Broadband Plan before Bush entered office but what did the Bush Administration do -- massive deregulation of the Internet and scrapped the National Broadband Plan.

Due to the Bush Administration's bad policies the U.S. fell from 4th in the world in terms of broadband Internet access penetration when George W. Bush entered office in 2001 to 17th by 2005-2006 -- last I checked it is 28th.

What happened was other countries maintained their pro competitive regulatory commitments banning mergers etc and kept broadband Internet access affordable. The Bush Administration though neglected to keep up these common sense regulations and as a nation we fell behind other countries that kept up their regulations.

Last year in Europe as the Obama FCC sought to restore Net Neutrality -- a European Commissioner bragged Net Neutrality is better in Europe -- and the Internet market is more competitive there -- this Commissioner said that in Europe they would not hesitate to enforce Net Neutrality ever -- there is no dire need in Europe today for new Net Neutrality rules like in the U.S. because so much of the Internet market there is already competitive.

If we maintained our regulatory commitments during the Bush years there would not be a huge digital divide in the country today. We could have millions of more jobs (closing the digital divide can result in more job creation) and Internet for everyone rich or poor, or urban or rural. Internet companies would not be able to throttle web traffic. Big ISPs like Time Warner Cable and Comcast would be unable to prioritize and discriminate against web traffic or content. A major problem right now with cable companies is they have a conflict of interest as they also have digital cable TV services -- they might without Net Neutrality try to restrict competition from online video on demand services to their TV services.

What we need to try to do is breakup AT&T again -- spinoff SBC Communications & BellSouth from AT&T, and breakup some big cable companies -- forbid providers of TV or Internet service from owning content -- there should be Net Neutrality making every ISP a dumb pipe taking you to the same Internet and providing equal access to all. We need to restore the regulations the Bush Administration abandoned and enforce the regulations we have.

Idea # 179International Lessons

Comments

Michael Sullivan 1 month ago

There are so many factual errors in the first sentence of your first paragraph that it's hard to see the purpose in reading much further. Before Bush/Cheney (i.e., pre-2001), there was no federal regulation of the Internet to speak of. There were federal grants that supported the development of the Arpanet, which was not public, and some further federal funding from NSF for expanding the Arpanet into the early Internet, but there were no regulations of any importance. The early Internet was entirely self-governing. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was an expansion of educational networks tied to the Internet. These often were subject to regulations, in the form of acceptable use policies, prohibiting commercial use. There were few consumers (other than students and faculty) using the Internet until the early 1990s, when publicly accessible commercial networks began to develop and acted, in part, as Internet Service Providers. These companies were largely small outfits, until AOL connected to the Internet as the first really large ISP. There was no regulatory ban on "mega-mergers" related to the Internet. In fact, regulators allowed a merger to go forward between AOL and CompuServe, the two biggest online consumer services, and later between AOL and Time Warner. The one significant merger that was stopped by regulators was the 1999 proposed merger of MCI and Sprint, both of which operated extensive Internet backbones as well as long-distance telephone networks. But that was shot down less than a year before Bush/Cheney, not 30+ years earlier. Your mention of the line-sharing and resale mandates fails to acknowledge that those mandates were responsible for slowing the buildout of DSL and delaying the buildout of fiber-based networks. Telephone companies had little incentive to build out DSL or fiber if others could then use the networks at below-cost prices. And your assertion that "Ma Bell" -- the AT&T-owned Bell System telephone monopoly -- was broken up for reasons related to broadband Internet access is simply wrong. There was no broadband Internet access in the early 1980s, when the MFJ (the consent decree that mandated the breakup of the Bell System on January 1, 1984) was entered into. The MFJ was the outcome of an antitrust suit that centered on Western Electric's manufacturing of telephone equipment and the relationship of AT&T's long-distance telephone network to the local phone companies. It did draw a distinction between telecommunications and information services, but there is no basis for claiming that this was done for the purpose of creating competition the the "emerging broadband Internet access market that was still in its infancy." That market did not exist at the time. It didn't exist until nearly a decade later.

Our nation's leaders didn't realize the Internet would become the future of all our media in 1984, nor did they in 1996, when the Telecom Act was enacted -- it contains only a couple of isolated references to the Internet. The 1996 Act did not require the broadband market to be open and competitive; it doesn't even address the existence of such a market.

Post New Comment

Activity Chart

Categories