CT Blue

I got a bit of a laugh when I read this in the Times yesterday:

The Federal Communications Commission’s chairman delivered a tough message to cable and broadband executives Wednesday, saying a lack of competition in their industry has hurt consumers.

The chairman, Tom Wheeler, said that the F.C.C. intended to address the problem by writing tough new rules to enforce so-called net neutrality, preventing big broadband and cable companies from blocking access to innovative new technologies and start-ups that might emerge as competitors.

via The New York Times: Stern Talk from Chief of FCC on Open Net

I imagine that the assembled executives did their best to appear frightfully concerned at the prospects of Wheeler taking “stern” action against them, but it is all really kabuki. They all know he's on their side.

Consider this:

Here's the dirty truth behind proposed rules gutting net neutrality the Federal Communications Commission will be considering next month: The FCC is “stocked with staffers” who just went through the revolving door from the internet service providers who would most benefit by the new rule. Lee Fang reports:

Take Daniel Alvarez, an attorney who has long represented Comcast through the law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP. In 2010, Alvarez wrote a letter to the FCC on behalf of Comcast protesting net neutrality rules, arguing that regulators failed to appreciate “socially beneficial discrimination.”

… Alvarez is now on the other side, working among a small group of legal advisors hired directly under Tom Wheeler, the new FCC Commissioner who began his job in November.

As soon as Wheeler came into office, he also announced the hiring of former Ambassador Philip Verveer as his senior counselor. A records request reveals that Verveer also worked for Comcast in the last year. In addition, he was retained by two industry groups that have worked to block net neutrality, the Wireless Association (CTIA) and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.

Then there's Matthew DelNero, who was hired to work specifically on net neutrality. He used to work for an ISAP called TDS Telecom which has, of course, lobbied against net neutrality. One new advisor to FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, (who used to be associate general counsel at Verizon and has called net neutrality a “problem in search of a solution” ) is Brendan Carr. Carr has worked for AT&T, CenturyLink, Verizon and the U.S. Telecom Association, “a trade group that has waged war in Washington against net neutrality since 2006.”

Chairman Wheeler, of course, came directly from lobbying for the telecommunications industry. There's obviously a high degree of expertise on telecommunications issues among all these people who seem to flow seamlessly between roles in industry and regulating that industry. But they aren't the only experts. There are dozens of people working in public interest groups who know these issues just as well who could be staffing the commission.

via Daily Kos

Amazingly, the article in the Times proves it's all a charade, though perhaps the reporter was unaware of that fact:

People who have been briefed on the chairman’s proposal say that while he opposes the blocking of content by an Internet service provider, his new outline would allow broadband companies to offer some content providers a faster lane through which they can transmit video and services, as long as they do not slow down other content to do so.

Some might say that there if you build a road and only let some people on the fast lane then you are not being neutral so far as users are concerned. It doesn't change the situation if instead of building a new road you turn a one lane road into two lanes, but charge a toll to anyone wanting to use the passing lane.

Anyway, here's how it will work. The present quite slow state of affairs in American internet service will become the ghetto for the content providers who can't afford to pay to go on the “fast lane”. But who says there can only be one fast lane? Why not multiple fast lanes at different speeds and different prices, always, of course, leaving that one slow, overcrowded, lane for the unwashed. Over at Daily Kos, they suspect that monopolists like Comcast will slow down the slow lane to force content providers onto the fast lane:

There's absolutely no question that Internet service providers will happily take the power to sell fast-lane delivery to the highest bidder Wheeler is proposing. There's no reason to believe that they won't use that power—just like Comcast did with Netflix—to slow down networks to try to force content providers to pay up.

But really, that won't be necessary, at least not directly. All they have to do is keep the speed limit on the slow lane right where it is, and, as potholes develop, be quite slow about fixing them.

So yes, I'm sure those executives were absolutely terrified as they listened to Tom Wheeler's threaten to make them even richer.