Cable Sits Out Talk on Net Neutrality Deals Outside FCC
The cable industry, having sat out Monday’s deal on net neutrality between Google and Verizon, isn’t likely to take part in any future agreements between supporters and opponents of rules, industry officials said. There’s little to be gained politically from cable operators’ signing on to the Google-Verizon agreement, said pay-TV executives and lawyers. Attacks on that wireline-broadband deal by many nonprofit groups supporting net neutrality -- and the lack of support from FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, at whose behest representatives of NCTA and five other bodies met unsuccessfully to seek consensus -- show that similar deals may not have support among regulators and lawmakers, industry lawyers said.
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That means there may be no additional deals of any kind involving any ISPs, cable or otherwise, communications industry lawyers said. The agreement between Verizon and Google, whose Android operating system works with some Verizon Wireless phones, involved unique circumstances, they said. There’s limited political will from members of Congress and commissioners to support any further net neutrality arrangements reached outside the talks at the FCC run by Chief of Staff Eddie Lazarus, said industry lawyers watching the conversations, not taking part in them.
Cable operators still seem interested in reaching a deal at the talks brokered by Lazarus, which could resume after the current pause, industry officials said. Genachowski last week privately told participants in those negotiations that he still sought a net neutrality consensus (CD Aug 9 p1). Some in the cable industry continue to hope that a broader agreement, going beyond Google and Verizon, can be reached at the FCC and taken to Capitol Hill to be codified in legislation, an industry official said. NCTA President Kyle McSlarrow had remained optimistic before Lazarus called off the meetings Thursday that a deal could be reached at the commission, industry officials said.
It’s “a positive sign that two companies with divergent views on the need for regulation can reach agreement on this complicated set of issues,” an NCTA spokesman said about Google and Verizon. He declined to comment on terms of that deal. “We remain focused and committed to exploring a targeted legislative framework that can be applied more broadly across all industry players,” the spokesman said. “The Google-Verizon announcement shows that it is possible for compromise and that we can reach a constructive solution."
Criticism of the Google-Verizon agreement even before the companies confirmed it Monday may dissuade other ISPs from holding talks of their own, an industry executive said. Parties to any other deal could face similar criticism, the executive said. Although cable operators aren’t talking now with companies or groups that support net neutrality about an agreement, such conversations could happen, a communications lawyer said. Cable operators or other ISPs could find the Google-Verizon deal to be a starting point for conversations about a separate agreement, the attorney said.
"I don’t think any more side deals will help” industry, said cable consultant and lawyer Steve Effros. “It is clear that the government is going to make the decisions. I think eventually that’s going to mean Congress” will pass a law, “and the industry is going to work with Congress and the FCC to find whatever that common ground is that people can agree to,” he said. “Clearly the Verizon-Google announcement was just used as feeding frenzy for the public interest groups to try to stampede the commission in another direction.”