IF YOU USE THE INTERNET … A MUST READ-Now that the President of the United States has come out in favor of net neutrality there seems to be a roar from elected officials. Until the president spoke, the same elected officials refused to provide their position about net neutrality. This is not merely the President’s personal position but is in fact supported by more than 4 million emails sent to the FCC supporting that position. It is a nice change to have our leadership support what we want.
First, let me thank CityWatch, for being at the forefront of informing the public about the dangers that have been lurking at the FCC with their intent to destroy net neutrality. I've been honored to provide numerous articles, over the past six months, about this issue because of my background in the cable television franchising process. Sites like CityWatch are the very reason that we must protect net neutrality.
The President has proposed that broadband cable systems be treated as public utilities under title II of the Telecommunications Act. The effect of this action is merely to limit any ability of the utility to influence the content that is provided on the service. Currently Comcast and Time Warner cable have found ways to alter net neutrality by charging higher rates to those companies that are successful in delivering content via the Internet. Is this right? Are we penalizing success so that successful content providers such as Netflix, Google and Twitter subsidize the failure of cable television?
Let us start with one irrefutable fact. Cable television and all of the broadband systems are run across public right of ways. Yes that means that the public owns the polls that the wires for cable television and AT&T are run on. The public has paid for the construction through telephone and utility rates. The public continues to pay for the use of these wires with a fee that is added on to their cable television and broadband service bill. These are not funds being paid by the cable companies but are being extracted from the public.
The FCC and the cable television companies would have you believe that they are creating a series of laws to protect net neutrality. By definition anything that is not neutral is biased. Therefore any laws that are passed must have a bias built into them. It is difficult to believe that Tom Wheeler, chairman of the FCC and former chairman of the cable television lobbying group, is truly interested in protecting the best interest of the public. We have continually watched former members of the FCC being bought by Comcast, after their careers as regulators were ended. The open-door policy between Comcast, the largest broadband provider in the United States, and the FCC is a travesty.
Since the end of net neutrality will require a bias, it is clear that such bias will not benefit the general public but rather the cable companies and Internet service providers that are stealing that which was not created by them, the Internet. The Internet was in fact created at government expense but where were the free market people when the government was investing in the Internet that has created so many millionaires and billionaires in this country?
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The argument that the imposition of title II for broadband services would somehow be against the free market system is basically laughable. Cable television was never subject to free market forces because it was allowed to operate as a monopoly during the first 20 years of its existence. Once you have an entrenched monopoly for 20 years you cannot now say that it is subject to free market forces. As a person with more than 30 years in the financial services industry I understand the concept of free market. In the mid-1990s the government attempted to create competition within the cable television industry by deregulating existing telephone monopolies, AT&T and Verizon. Once again allowing the politically powerful to get special privilege in the marketplace.
Another argument by those who oppose net neutrality is that providing any limits upon the companies that provide broadband services would limit creativity. Allowing broadband providers to determine who can access the market would stifle the creation of new businesses and content providers. The free market does not allow for one competitor to limit the growth of another competitor. That would be the effect of allowing two different speeds for the Internet. Do we really trust the same cable companies who turned cable into a vast wasteland of garbage to now protect content on the Internet?
I don't think so!
(Clinton Galloway is the author of the fascinating book “Anatomy of a Hustle: Cable Comes to South Central LA”. This is another installment in an ongoing CityWatch series on power, influence and corruption in government … Corruption Watch. Galloway is a CityWatch contributor and can be reached here. Mr. Galloway’s views are his own.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 93
Pub: Nov 18, 2014