Democrats Urge Tighter FCC Rules
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Senate Democrats pressed the Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission this week to slap tighter controls on media ownership, public-interest broadcasting and television violence. But after a sometimes contentious two-hour hearing Thursday, some lawmakers expressed little hope of...
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Democratic lawmakers are pressing the Bush administration to disclose the identity of more troubled nursing homes, saying earlier efforts to alert consumers did not go far enough.
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Democrats hope to pick up Republican votes by tightening eligibility for the program and making other concessions.
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The Democratic senators are pushing the Democratic Party further from the business-friendly posture once championed by Bill Clinton.
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Several lawmakers protested a spectrum auction proposal from the chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), saying his plan could limit the number of bidders and raise costs to consumers.
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Democrats turned to an evangelical Christian to give their weekly radio address on Saturday, citing a desire to avoid partisanship after last month's elections that gave them control of Congress.
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Two senators on Wednesday threatened  to introduce bipartisan legislation that would block the U.S.  Federal Communication Commission from acting quickly to ease  rules governing media ownership.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC)Â should resist calls to impose net neutrality regulations on broadband providers because such rules could hurt the Internet, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)Â said Thursday. The DOJ, in a brief filed with the FCC, said net neutrality rules could "inefficiently skew investment, delay innovation, and diminish consumer welfare." Rules that would prohibit broadband providers from giving priority to their own Internet traffic and prohibit them from blocking or slowing competitors' traffic could also prevent providers from charging fees for priority service, the DOJ said. This could, in turn, cause fees to increase to all broadband users, the DOJ said. "Free market competition, unfettered by unnecessary governmental regulatory restraints, is the best way to foster innovation and development of the Internet," the DOJ said. Net neutrality rules could also discourage broadband providers from investing in new, high-speed services and keep providers from managing their networks efficiently, the DOJ said. The DOJ's comments were in response toÂ an FCC inquiry, launched in March, about whether there's a need for net neutrality regulations. Individuals and organizations have filed more than 27,800 comments in the net-neutrality inquiry, many of them from people who want the FCC to impose net-neutrality rules. Some Internet-based companies and consumer groups have argued that net-neutrality rules are needed after the FCC and U.S. Supreme Court in 2005 did away with regulations that required incumbent broadband providers to share their networks with competing providers. Several telecom executives have complained that Internet companies are not adequately paying network owners for using their pipes. Public Knowledge, a consumer-rights group and net-neutrality advocate, said the DOJ doesn't seem to recognize that most U.S. consumers have few choices for broadband providers. "It is at odds with reality for a Justice Department that approved the largest telecommunications merger in history with a mere press release to now claim that market forces and antitrust enforcement will be able to protect the free and open Internet," Gigi Sohn, Public Knowledge's president, said. "A more vigorous antitrust analysis would have recognized there is a market failure and would have resulted in conditions on the AT&T takeover of BellSouth that would have benefited consumers and Internet companies." The DOJ has failed to recognize that net neutrality would protect consumers and Internet companies from discrimination, she added. "Perhaps the DOJ does not recall that there is very little in the way of market forces to protect consumers," Sohn said. The DOJ, however, said there's little evidence of the need for net-neutrality rules, with only a "few isolated examples" of broadband providers blocking Web content from competitors. "Proponents of 'net neutrality' regulation have failed to show that a sufficient case exists for imposing the sorts of broad marketplace restrictions that have been proposed," the DOJ filing said. In recent years, the DOJ has proposed its own regulations for the Internet. In mid-2006, the DOJ floated a proposal that would require ISPs to retain the Web histories of their users for two years as a way to aid law enforcement investigations. That proposal met resistance from ISPs.
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The Republican chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is disputing Democratic assertions that a new rule loosening restrictions on media ownership is full of loopholes and will lead to a wave of mergers and fewer choices for consumers.
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Three House Democrats are urging colleagues to revoke key parts of new personnel rules that would curb union rights at the Defense Department, contending the rules are a "bad deal" for Defense civil service employees.
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As Senate prepares to consider a Net access ban extension, Democrat behind original ban warns changes to current law approved by the House of Representatives could make that so.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Congress still needs to deal with network neutrality, and supporters in Congress are willing to block any legislation favored by broadband providers until the issue is resolved, a leading Democratic lawmaker said Wednesday. "Network neutrality is a large, unresolved debate," said Representative Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat, speaking at the State of the 'Net Conference in Washington, D.C. "It's [the Internet's] open and accessible policy that has enabled it to be a platform of innovation." A net neutrality law, which would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or slowing Web content from competitors,Â stalled in Congress in 2006, and large broadband providers, such as AT&T and Verizon, opposed efforts to pass a law. But net neutrality advocates -- many of them part of the Democratic majority that now controls both houses of Congress -- would block any legislation requested by the large broadband providers until a net neutrality compromise is hammered out, Boucher predicted. Last year, AT&T and Verizon pushed for a new law that would streamline the franchising process they must go through to offer television over IP service in competition with cable TV. But this year, the large broadband providers have largely backed off on their lobbying efforts, and Boucher suggested that's because Democrats will demand a net neutrality law as a trade-off for any legislation that benefits providers. Boucher supports a net neutrality law, but he called for compromise. Congress should not pass a net neutrality law with "unintended consequences" that hurt the development of the Internet, he said. "I don't want to do anything ... that has the effect of hobbling innovation inside the network," he added. Other speakers at the conference, sponsored by the bipartisan Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus, suggested a net neutrality law would hurt efforts to increase broadband adoption in the U.S. A net neutrality law would limit broadband providers' options for providing new services, said George Ford, chief economist at the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies, a free-market-focused think tank. "We should exercise discipline," Ford said. "We rarely do that with communications policy." Other speakers argued there's little evidence of broadband providers blocking competitors' Web content, a scenario net neutrality advocates want to prevent. "Economic change and technological change need room to breathe," said Christopher Yoo, a tech law professor at Vanderbilt University. If broadband providers eventually take action that harms customers and competition, then Congress should pass a law, Yoo said. Yoo and David Farber, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, argued that broadband providers need the ability to block Internet content such as spam and to shut down Web applications that hog bandwidth. Providers should also be allowed to prioritize Web applications such as video or voice, allowing customers to have a high quality of service, Farber said. "If you try to get quality of service for everyone, you don't get quality of service," Farber said. But Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia University Law School, said providers should only block Web content in the most extreme circumstances. The difference between "good blocking" and "bad blocking" depends on the user's perspective, he said. "Blocking should be highly suspect," Wu added. "We say good blocking is good and bad blocking is bad, but so does the Chinese government. They're making bad decisions at the center [of the network]."
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Democrat says he'll take wait-and-see approach to pursuing new rules requiring wireless carriers to let consumers use whatever applications and devices they desire.
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(InfoWorld) - U.S. consumers should be allowed to take phones along with them when they switch wireless carriers, and spectrum to be auctioned through the U.S. Federal Communications Commission should include rules requiring the winning bidders to sell access to competitors at wholesale rates, some U.S. lawmakers said Wednesday. Some members of the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet also questioned what they called huge early termination fees on wireless telephone contracts. But other lawmakers and executives with wireless carriers questioned the need for new wireless regulations, saying an already competitive market protects customers. The U.S. wireless industry is "vigorously competitive," with four national and several regional carriers, said Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican. New net neutrality and open access rules that would require carriers to open up their networks to new devices and applications could slow wireless innovations, he said. "We should take care to not adopt policies that would set back the highly competitive wireless market," he added. "No matter how you slice it, forced network neutrality smothers investment in a competitive market and in the end will leave consumers worse off with probably fewer choices." But other members of the subcommittee, mostly Democrats, questioned why phones can't switch between wireless networks. U.S. customers should also be able to run any applications they want on wireless networks instead of having limited choices approved by the carrier, said Representative Mike Doyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat. "It's time for consumers to become the deciders of what they want their phones to do," Doyle said. Apple's recent launch of its iPhone demonstrates the "promise and problems" of the U.S. wireless industry, added Representative Ed Markey, the subcommittee chairman and a Massachusetts Democrat. While the iPhone has innovative new technologies, U.S. customers can use it with only one wireless carrier, AT&T, he said. Other lawmakers called on the FCC to go farther than requiring device portability and application choices when it sets the rules for the use of spectrum to be auctioned in the 700MHz band. Part of the 60MHz of spectrum to be auctioned by early next year should include requirements for the winner to offer the spectrum at wholesale rates to other wireless and broadband providers, said Representative Chip Pickering, a Mississippi Republican. A wholesale rule would allow new wireless broadband providers to spring up all over the country, Pickering said. The 700MHz spectrum, now used by U.S. television stations for over-the-air broadcasts, would allow for long-range wireless broadband services, many experts say. The wholesale rule wouldn't put new regulations on existing wireless services, Pickering said. "What's wrong with that?" he asked. There's nothing wrong with a carrier voluntarily deciding to wholesale its spectrum, said Steven Zipperstein, general counsel for Verizon Wireless. "We don't think a business model should be hardwired into the auction by regulatory fiat," he said. Ed Evans, CEO of startup carrier Stelera Wireless, questioned whether a wholesale business model would succeed in the new spectrum. "You're going to give up a scarce resource ... that you're not going to be able to recoup the value on," he said. "You're going to prohibit other people from deploying proven technologies in that same area." But Jason Devitt, cofounder and former CEO of Vindigo, a company that distributes local guides on mobile phones, said the U.S. needs a more open wireless system where application providers don't have to work out deals with wireless carriers. "We have a regulatory system that doesn't work," said Devitt, now CEO of Skydeck, a wireless startup. "I'm mad as hell that I require permission to innovate in the wireless market." While wireless customers usually have to switch devices when they switch carriers, U.S. television subscribers don't have to buy a new TV set when they switch from cable TV service to satellite, added Timothy Wu, a professor at the Columbia Law School and supporter of open access rules. "There's something strange about this industry," he said. "Even the rules of personal property ... seem to be suppressed."
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Keeping momentum on ethics reforms is proving tough for House Democratic leaders, who are struggling to sell  lawmakers on a proposal for overhauling House ethics enforcement, which is part of the party's pledge to improve accountability in Congress.
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Presidential candidate John Edwards is urging the FCC to make it easier for small companies to acquire wireless spectrum when it goes to auction next year.
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Some U.S. lawmakers want wireless networks to be opened up to new devices and applications, and they questioned expensive early termination fees on wireless service contracts.