FCC Must Define ‘Reasonable Management’ Better, Says Ex-Member

Chong was “just amazed” to see net neutrality blossom from “a geeky telecom issue to a bumper-sticker election issue,” she said. A Republican, she was named by President Bill Clinton to the FCC 1994 to 1997 and to the PUC by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in January 2006.

Chong hopes the FCC responds to any problems it finds with “a fix that isn’t too regulatory and is targeted,” she said. The commission is the proper agency to handle network discrimination complaints “and they're doing a pretty good job of it,” she said, saying the agency’s performance in this area shows that net neutrality legislation isn’t needed. The Madison River case involving port blocking of VoIP service demonstrated that the FCC will respond “effectively and relatively quickly” to any problems, Chong said. Lawrence Spiwak, president of the Phoenix Center think tank, agreed.

Broad, ex-ante government rules against discrimination would thwart innovation and economic growth unleashed by the largely unregulated Internet, Chong said: “Please don’t screw it up by putting a bunch of rules on it.” Advocates of these rules often say they support a light regulatory hand, but “the word ‘minimal’… ‘never, ever'” applies to actual “regulatory intervention,” she said. “We use elephant guns to shoot gnats.” Spiwak said neutrality legislation would concentrate the industry, reduce rural broadband availability and raise network costs and service prices.

Columbia University law professor Tim Wu, who developed the net neutrality doctrine, congratulated Chong in the Q- and-A for being a “moderate net neutrality advocate” in supporting FCC action against discrimination. He disputed Chong’s statement that supporters of regulation would outlaw tiered broadband service, saying they aim to keep broadband providers from giving one Internet company preferential treatment over others -- say, Comcast favoring Yahoo.

“Comcast wouldn’t be that stupid, because people want to have the search engine they want to use,” Chong replied. “This is a theoretical ‘What if…’ I could do that all day [but] I regulate in the real world.” She had said earlier that competition among broadband providers from different industries eliminated incentives to block content. “Market forces should prevent this type of conduct,” she said. “If not, the FCC will stop it.” Chong said she didn’t know whether Comcast’s handling of the BitTorrent traffic was proper network management.

Chong joined other opponents of government neutrality rules at the conference in contending that their adversaries prescribe simplistic treatments for complex matters and widely disagree among themselves about what problem they think exists and how to solve it. “There’s just not a lot there where you get down to it,” Chong found in studying the case for government rules, she said.

The Internet Freedom Preservation Act introduced by Sens. Olympia Snowe, R-Me., and Byron Dorgan, D-S.D., stitches together elements reflecting varied views of discrimination problems and ends up “taking the most intense position” that could be devised, said Richard Clarke, AT&T assistant vice president for regulatory planning and policy.

Wu favors Snowe-Dorgan and a promised neutrality measure by Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., he said. He ruffled event-goers’ feathers by saying rules matter less than Internet users’ expectations of openness and nondiscrimination. Considering government rules more important is “Washington-centric” and “a law-professor way of looking at things,” he said.

Discrimination by network operators among application should be “absolutely impermissible, though Comcast may disagree,” Wu said. Beyond that, though “toll roads” generally “have dangerous properties,” it may be acceptable to pass measures “more moderate” than banning them, he said without elaborating.

New emphasis is needed on increasing “transparency” about how the Internet runs, including much more public reporting by operators on traffic and latency, Wu said. “It’s the one thing that nobody disagrees with. We've been talking about it for six years, yet nothing has happened,” he said. “For whatever reasons, the carriers don’t seem interested in delivering that information.” AT&T’s Clarke replied that Keynote and other Internet services disclose a great deal about Internet traffic, but neutrality supporters said they don’t provide much of the information needed.