Rhetoric, lobbying dollars high ahead of next week's FCC meeting

While it’s clear that regulatory changes are coming to broadband services and perhaps their mobile counterparts, trying to navigate which ones will spur investment and innovation is like trying to pick the right lottery numbers. There are too many combinations to make anyone who is rational think that this is going to end up with a big payoff, but if regulators get it wrong, industry and consumers could be out a lot more than a buck and a dream.
AT&T Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc. spent some serious money lobbying the Federal Communications Commission in the first quarter. AT&T reported $5.9 million in lobbying efforts at the FCC in the first quarter, while Verizon spent $4.7 million. A lot is at stake: A week from today the Federal Communications Commission is scheduled to issue a Notice of Inquiry on its framework for broadband Internet service in light of a federal appeals court ruling that the FCC is not authorized to regulate broadband services. The initiative is one of several underway that could alter the regulatory landscape for mobile and wired broadband services.
To recap, here are several proposals under development to regulate the Internet:
1. The National Broadband Plan: this grandiose project to bring broadband services to all Americans has no less a backer than the president of the United States. Today it is a policy goal, but the specifics will determine its success.
2. Four congressmen have announced they will try to rewrite the Telecom Act of 1996. While this plan is light on details, the legislators said they are not trying to interfere with the FCC’s efforts to regulate broadband services.
3. The FCC is trying to rewrite aforementioned rules so it can lightly regulate broadband services.
4. Seventy-four congressmen are concerned that the FCC’s efforts to reclassify broadband services will stall broadband development.
The congressmen trying to rewrite the telecom act have perhaps the most difficult road ahead because it’s an election year and there is still in no particular order these troubles facing Congress: unemployment remains high, there’s a war going on, healthcare issues, immigration issues and oil is still spilling into the Gulf of Mexico.
Nevertheless, the rhetoric is being turned up in advance of the NOI. FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, speaking at the Stanford School of Law earlier this week, likened the debate to regulate broadband services to war. “If the commission fails to reassert its authority – authority that I believe it clearly has – then the days of the open Internet will be succeeded by the age of the gatekeepers. Make no mistake about it. This is not going to be an easy fight. The big telephone and cable companies are doing everything they can to prevent the reclassification of Internet access services. They have redeployed their troops at the FCC, throughout Washington and in the blogosphere.”
FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker, who disagrees with the agency’s attempt to reclassify broadband services, said this today: “At the outset, I have concerns that this Title II debate is really about putting potential net neutrality rules on firmer ground. An effort to first shop for a desired list of regulatory authority and then define broadband to fit into the corresponding classification is not a task for the commission. Only Congress should make such a fundamental decision. If the existing classification fails to provide the necessary regulatory results, legislation is the appropriate remedy.”
Thursday’s FCC meeting is just the start.