Net Neutrality Order Ignores Robust Competition in Wireless Industry, CTIA Says
CTIA slammed the FCC’s Feb. 26 net neutrality order Tuesday for its “breezy dismissal” of competition in the wireless industry and the order’s “disregard for the pro-consumer benefits of that dynamic competition.” Meanwhile, CEA carried the net neutrality fight to the South by Southwest conference in Austin Tuesday as part of its policy summit there. The FCC released the order last week, which reclassifies broadband under Title II of the Communications Act (see 1503120053).
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Scott Bergmann, CTIA vice president-regulatory policy, began what he promised will be a series of blog posts on the ruling. The order “ignores decades of bipartisan consensus that competition is the best way to meet consumers’ needs and instead calls for government regulators to play an unprecedented and far more intrusive role in the broadband marketplace,” he said. Bergmann said the text of the order makes it appear “the FCC is devolving to a new philosophy in which no level of competition would be sufficient.”
There are abundant signs of mobile competition, including unprecedented consumer choice, increasing speeds and robust LTE deployment and declining prices, Bergmann said. “Instead, the FCC focuses extensively on the switching costs associated with mobile broadband,” he said. “The FCC’s discussion and characterization of switching mobile broadband providers is completely divorced from today’s consumer experience. It is easier than ever to switch providers, undercutting any suggestion that the number of competitive options is not highly instructive to the appropriate level of regulation.”
“Things are happening quickly” from the Internet of Things to wearables to driverless cars to drones, CEA President Gary Shapiro said, kicking off the SXSW policy summit. “They’re raising policy implications.”
Marvin Ammori, who advises high-tech companies, assured attendees at the session the order will be good for innovation. “All we’re asking for is keep the Internet open and create no blocking, no throttling, no paid prioritization,” he said. Historically, the FCC has been a “corrupt cesspool controlled by the big phone companies and the big cable companies,” he said.
The FCC was ready to do what it usually does and “hand things over” to the big companies but then there was a huge public backlash over the initial net neutrality order, Ammori said. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, “much to his credit,” saw the arguments and the public uprising, and the concerns raised by companies like Etsy and Tumblr that have not been involved in past FCC issues, he said. “I think this is one example where the FCC actually got it right and went against its usual instincts.”
The net neutrality order was a “political bait and switch,” countered Scott Cleland, chairman of Net Competition, an industry-funded group. Broadband providers support net neutrality, he said. “Title II is not net neutrality. It is a provision of law from 1934 to regulate the AT&T monopoly.” Cleland said long-term uncertainty will result from the order. “It is going to be litigated,” he said. “I think it’s 90 percent likely the FCC will lose. … It’s going down.” Investment will also go down, he said: “It’s going to be bad for the Internet.”
Markets aren’t perfect and there are competition problems in the broadband market, acknowledged Brent Skorup, research fellow at the Mercatus Center. “We have imperfect markets and imperfect regulators,” he said. “I’ll take my chances with the markets.”