AT&T Warns of Crossroads, Urges FCC Not To Double Down on Utility Regulation
Telecom policy is nearing a crossroads and could go in a very bad direction if the FCC doesn’t back off various utility-like regulatory initiatives, said AT&T Senior Executive Vice President Jim Cicconi. “The question is whether the Open Internet Order…
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was designed solely to keep a free and open Internet, like the prior rule we supported, or whether it signifies a much harder shift — a shift away from the pro-investment policies of the past 20 years,” he said in prepared remarks for the Emerging Issues Policy Forum in Amelia Island, Florida, Thursday. Cicconi said the “velocity of technological change is incredible,” and broadband networks are the bedrock and catalyst for innovative products and services: “Without broadband would Facebook be the Facebook we know today? Would Amazon be the Amazon we know today? Would Google be Alphabet? Would Uber even work? Of course not.” The broadband networks have been built with $1.4 trillion of mostly private investment over the past 20 years, he said. Policymakers helped by adopting a pro-investment “light touch regulatory framework," he said, but the current FCC has “strayed from that course” by reclassifying broadband under Title II of the Communications Act. He said the agency could make things worse through various proceedings: “the re-regulation of special access and Ethernet services”; tech transition regulation of new services as older technologies are retired; examinations of usage allowance; “Mother May I” oversight; promotion of municipal broadband and “special privacy rules that will apply solely to ISPs, not Google and Apple.” Cicconi rejected the notion of a binary choice between an open Internet and “adopting an archaic regulatory model designed for railroads in the 1880s,” saying “ideological purity” should give way to “pragmatic policies that spur investment to serve consumer needs.” He said it will take trillions of dollars to build future broadband networks. “Government policies can either make it easy, or make it hard,” he said, urging policymakers to reexamine their course. Public Knowledge officials Thursday urged the FCC to consolidate and build on its 2015 decisions for net neutrality and Title II and against cable concentration (see 1601140064). The FCC declined comment Friday.