FCC accused of power grab on broadband
FCC accused of power grab on broadband
By David McCabe - 01/23/16 01:23 PM EST
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will vote
next week on an annual report about the state of high-speed Internet deployment
around the country, something that has become a magnet for debate.
A proposed draft of the congressionally mandated report
finds that advanced telecommunications capability isn’t being deployed in a
“reasonable and timely fashion” to all Americans. According to a fact sheet
released by the agency, 34 million Americans do not have access to wired
internet service that meets the FCC’s definition of broadband — download speeds
of 25 Mbps and upload speeds of 3 Mbps.
The commission also found that the divide between rural
and urban Americans when it comes to broadband access persists. Thirty-nine
percent of rural residents don’t have access to wired broadband, according to
the report
“To maximize the benefits of broadband for the American
people, we not only need to facilitate innovation in areas like public safety
and civic engagement, but also to make sure all Americans have advanced
communications capabilities,” said commission Chairman Tom Wheeler in a blog
post. “The Commission has a statutory mandate to assess and report annually on
whether broadband is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely
fashion.”
But critics say the report isn’t just a compendium of
statistics, but a way for the FCC to expand its authority and place arbitrary
standards on Internet service providers.
The commission is authorized to take steps to expand
access when the annual report finds it lacking, which critics contend turns the
report into a tool for amassing more authority.
The FCC sparked controversy when it raised the benchmark
speeds for wired broadband to their current levels last year and forced
Internet providers to rethink their offerings.
That decision seems certain to loom over the commission’s
discussion on Thursday about the latest iteration of the report.
“It's bad enough the FCC keeps moving the goal posts on
their definition of broadband, apparently so they can continue to justify
intervening in obviously competitive markets,” said Jim Cicconi, AT&T
senior executive vice president for external and legislative affairs, in a
statement earlier this month. “It's beginning to look like the FCC will define
broadband whichever way maximizes its power under whichever section of the law
they want to apply.”
Some in Congress share the concerns of industry. In a
letter sent this week to Wheeler, six Republican senators questioned the
commission’s decision to use a lower benchmark for a program to expand
broadband access in rural communities. They fretted that the FCC might
more-tightly regulate providers offering speeds higher than the current
standard.
Other elements of the report could spark debate as well.
The commission found, for example, that “advanced telecommunications
capability” requires that customers be able to access both wired and wireless
broadband internet.
Meredith Rose, staff attorney for the interest group
Public Knowledge, said that the group supported the definition “because
consumers use the two for different things, because there are certain
limitations that are inherent in wireless broadband and mobile broadband
technologies that just don’t exist or don’t exist in the same degree in fixed
broadband."
Others disagree. Republican FCC Commissioner Michael
O'Rielly said in a statement last year that “the idea that we should tie our
section 706 report finding to the belief that consumers must have both [fixed
and wireless broadband] is flawed and strains credibility" because speeds
could increase substantially for mobile broadband in the coming years.
Also absent from the report is a standard definition for
how fast mobile internet has to be to be considered broadband. Rose said that
the process of establishing that benchmark will take some time, and is
complicated by the fact that the speed of wireless internet varies based on
more factors than with wired broadband.
"It actually literally changes with the phase of the
moon in some cases,” she said. “Because it’s such a complex issue, if the
commission decides to sit down and say, ‘We’re going to do a particular set of
metrics for this,’ it’s going to be a long process. And because the mobile
question has only really started to take center stage in the last couple of
years, it just hasn’t gotten to that stage yet."
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