Does the FCC Have a Safe Harbor to Deregulate Despite the 1994 MCI Case Precedent?

             The prior blog entry suggested that the Supreme Court would have to use a semantic sleight of hand to approve FCC deregulatory initiatives while vacating new or resurrected regulatory rules and requirements.  See https://telefrieden.blogspot.com/2024/04/does-supreme-court-conservative.html. On further review, I think there just might be a way to pull this blocked on one side, open on the other gambit.

             Despite all the speculation about pending foreclosure of regulatory agency discretion, there is a provision in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that the Court might deem sufficiently clear to withstand the major question and ambiguity roadblocks: 47 U.S. Code § 160 - Competition in provision of telecommunications service.  See https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/160.

             This Section establishes three evaluative criteria for the FCC to use when considering a deregulatory proposal for Title II, telecommunications service providers:

 (1)       enforcement of such regulation or provision is not necessary to ensure that the charges, practices, classifications, or regulations by, for, or in connection with that telecommunications carrier or telecommunications service are just and reasonable and are not unjustly or unreasonably discriminatory;

(2)       enforcement of such regulation or provision is not necessary for the protection of consumers; and

(3)       forbearance from applying such provision or regulation is consistent with the public interest. 47 U.S.C. §160(a)(1)-(3).

             There’s a lot of wiggle room in the criteria for a pro marketplace-oriented FCC to abandon common carrier rules and regulations.  Despite all the conservative majority’s antipathy toward regulatory agency activism, Section 160 just might provide enough clarity to green light major deregulatory initiative.  

             No questions asked.

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board's Faulty Memory

             You would think the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal would remember what it wrote about network neutrality. In its April 24th diatribe against network neutrality regulation,

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fcc-net-neutrality-jessica-rosenworcel-biden-administration-internet-b427c825?mod=opinion_feat1_editorials_pos1; the Board appears has forgotten how it spread the gospel that classifying Internet access as telecommunications service, subject to streamlined regulation, would stifle investment, innovation, and employment in the wireless industry. No 5G, no billion-dollar acquisitions, and nothing but stagnation in an industry otherwise considered quite dynamic and robust.

             The Editorial Board joined a large cast of characters, including former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, and gobs of “coin-operated” sponsored researchers, in ignoring a basic tenant in high tech finance: Research and development, as well as capital expenditures in next generation service, trump any regulatory initiative, no matter how misguided.

             The Editorial Board also lost track of where U.S. wireless carriers operate along a technology curve in any given year.  High investment occurs when competitive necessity requires carriers to install next generation equipment, followed by far less investment once the new plant becomes operational.

             Wireless carriers cannot afford to punish overzealous regulators with skimpy investment at the onset of next generation service, nor do they overinvest simply because a more lenient and favorable regulatory environment exists, soon after a high point in new technology deployment.

             The Editorial Board also seems to have forgotten the initiatives by much loved fellow conservatives to require content neutrality by liberal and biased Internet Service Providers.  Some of the Journal’s best buddies urged Congress to mandate common carriage regulation of the Internet.

Network Neutrality Redux and the Return of Falsehoods and Disinformation

            Despite vowing to eschew involvement in the latest Network Neutrality drama, I cannot sit back and let stand the resumption of the distorted gospel preached by the anti-network neutrality crowd.  This group has legitimate criticisms, many of which I have tried, via hundreds of law review pages—to analyze, and even endorse, in specific instances.  

            For example, see Freedom to Discriminate: Assessing the Lawfulness and Utility of Biased Broadband Networks, 20 VANDERBILT JOURNAL OF ENTERTAINMENT AND TECHNOLOGY LAW, 655-708 (2018); https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/jetlaw/vol20/iss3/2/; Grey nuances in the black and white debate over subsidized Internet access, 41 TELECOMMUNICATIONS POLICY 1017-1026 (2017); http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2016.10.002; Network Neutrality and Consumer Demand for “Better Than Best Efforts” Traffic Management, 26 FORDHAM INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT LAW JOURNAL, 71-102 (Fall, 2015); http://www.fordhamiplj.org/publications/network-neutrality-and-consumer-demand-for-better-than-best-efforts-traffic-management/; Internet Protocol Television and the Challenge of “Mission Critical” Bits, 33 CARDOZO ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT LAW JOURNAL, No. 1, 47-87 (2015);http://www.cardozoaelj.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Frieden-FINAL.pdf.

Even current FCC Commissioners, who ought to know better, will trot out the same clearly untrue parade of horribles.

            Network neutrality regulation will not create a suffocating Internet rate regulation regime.  The Democratic majority has clearly exempted broadband internet access from Title II common rate regulation. By the way, Title II still explicitly applies to wireless telecommunications, like cellphone service, and no one can credibly claim that carriers are severely constrained by  overpowering FCC oversight.  Network neutrality orders have always applied light-handed regulatory oversight.

            Title II of the Communications Act does not impose some atavistic, old school “public utility” regulation.  Despite the growing efforts of the Supreme Court to prevent regulatory agencies from responding to changed circumstances, the FCC has frequently recalibrated its Title II regulatory toolkit over time.  My prior blog post https://telefrieden.blogspot.com/2023/10/upcoming-limits-on-fcc-statutory.html noted that an expansive reading of West Virginia. v. EPA,  https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf might prevent the Commission from streamlining and reducing regulation, unless the Court can craft language that creates an exemption for deregulatory initiatives that require a new and improved statutory interpretation.

A doctrinal and wrong-headed insistence on legislative clarity, ironically could prevent the FCC from improving regulations and make them better in light of fast changing technological and marketplace conditions.  Bear in mind that the last major revision to the Communications Act of 1934, took place in 1996, a time preceding the emergence of a mission critical Internet for most people.  It appears that some of the six conservative Supreme Court Justices now expect Congress to act early and often in revising the Communications Act.  If Congress fails to act—and we surely can expect that--then apparently the FCC is powerless to respond to changed circumstances.

Over several decades, I have tried to explain that much of the problems in applying statutory definitions to Internet access, stems from the FCC’s insistence that a single classification must apply.  The FCC created mutually exclusivity between telecommunications services and information services in 1998 in response to a letter of inquiry from a Senator Ted Stevens. See Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service, CC Docket No. 96-45, Report to Congress, 13 FCC Rcd 11501(1998).

Nothing in the Communications Act prevents the FCC from recognizing that technological and marketplace convergence creates service offerings that combine basic and enhanced, telecommunications and information services. Our wireless handsets offer basic plain old telephone service, texting, which used to be a legacy telecommunications service, and other services that combine data processing/information services with telecommunications carriage.

            The FCC does not have to insist on an either/or dichotomy,  Nothing in the Communications Act mandates this.  We have had to tolerate decades long regulatory toggling between telecommunications service and information service, because the FCC cannot wrap its head around the reality that convergence requires a nuanced and admittedly more complicated blend of definitions.  Sometimes the statute does not even provide a definition, such as “advanced telecommunications capability.” The FCC interprets these words to include broadband, but the Republican Commissioners want to ignore the word telecommunications and instead insert information service.  This sure looks like overreaching, legislating by unelected bureaucrats so reviled by the right.  Then again, some of them want to convert social networks into involuntary common carriers to deny them any sort of First Amendment editorial freedom.

            Lastly (I hope!), we really ought to laugh at the false notion that a single regulatory initiative will exclusively impact the aggregate level of infrastructure investment carriers will make in a given year.  Former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai preached this gospel relentlessly and it became a truth for anti-network neutrality advocates. One has to ignore the carriers’ business plans and the ebb and flow of technology investment as a function of innovation and product life cycles. 

To believe the network neutrality investment disincentive canard, one would have to discount the billions invested in new 5G spectrum and network upgrades.  I expect sponsored, voodoo economists to “prove” a decline in carrier network investment going forward.  Should aggregate investment actually decline, this outcome more likely results from the winding down of 5G investments, not the onset of innovation and investment stifling regulation.

Lessons in Incivility: Two Frequent and Frustrating Strategies

            My academic post makes it possible for countless hours of reading across the entire political, economic, philosophical and social spectrum.  I recommend you avoid the common practice of seeking only content that confirms preconceptions.  My eclectic pursuit of all sides to the story requires patience and tolerance for hyperbole and deliberate mistruths.

            Two frequently used strategies drive me crazy.  A pox on all houses—left, right and central--where authors personalize a dispute and perpetuate a mischaracterization of truth when they surely know better.

            I recently read an extensive analysis about the refusal of Verizon Wireless in California to waive its contractual right to throttle broadband bit transmission speeds of first responders, including fire fighters.  The author and I share many conclusions, including the confirmation that Verizon reserved the legal right to throttle subscribers who exceed a threshold of data usage, despite having purchased an “unlimited” data plan.  Additionally, the author and I agree that Verizon did not violate any specific prohibition in the now reversed FCC 2015 Open Internet Order.

            Not content to make a convincing and thorough case, the author (I will not identify, or vilify him) relied on two strategies I will not use.  He singled out and maligned an individual who had a major role in shaping the FCC’s 2015 document.  Rather than agree to disagree, the author deviated from substantive discourse and took several opportunities to criticize the person and not her work product.  How does vilifying a person enhance and bolster the critic’s case?

            The other uncivil strategy involves the misrepresentation of a regulatory policy as more intrusive, unnecessary, harmful and atavistic than what is true.  In this case, the author misrepresented the FCC’s common carrier, telecommunications service regulation applied to Internet Service Providers as something appropriate only for “public utilities.”  Surely this author knows wireless carriers, including Verizon Wireless, trigger Title II, common carrier regulatory oversight.  This regulatory status does not convert wireless carriers into public utilities, nor does it impose burdensome regulatory duties. 

            The Telecommunications Act of 1996 authorizes the FCC to streamline and forbear from imposing most common carrier regulatory burdens when a market becomes competitive.  The FCC has largely deregulated the wireless marketplace even as it continues to classify service providers as common carriers.  No one can credibly assert that U.S. wireless carriers bear a costly regulatory burden that has created major disincentives for these carriers to participate in billion dollar spectrum auctions, or to invest billions more in infrastructure.

           

            Characterizing Title II regulation as unnecessary and so “old school” misrepresents the nature, scope and burden of the flexibility the FCC has in applying this legislatively mandated classification.  The author appears to have used this frequent mischaracterization to bolster his argument that network neutrality regulation is unnecessary.  We could have civil and substantive discussion about whether and how the FCC should regulate ISPs, including whether such oversight has any impact on public safety and the broadband speed of first responders’ smartphones.  As well, we could speculate whether the FCC would have backed away from its initial streamlining of ISP regulatory oversight.  Instead, the author uses an inappropriate public utility frame for the nature of the FCC’s previous regulatory regime.  He appears to imply that any sort of common carrier regulation constitutes overreach, even as wireless carriers have thrived under such status, without operating as public utilities, or trying to characterize their regulatory burden as equal to that borne by true public utilities, like electric companies.

            The author distracts his largely on point analysis with two uncivil tactics that have become both common and inappropriate.

Missing the Burning Forest for the Trees-Verizon Throttles California Fire Fighters at the Worst Possible Time, But Few Get the Lesson

            Verizon’s so-called customer care staff made a grievous mistake when they ignored pleas to override automated software that throttled California fire fighters’ broadband connections.  See https://www.sccgov.org/sites/opa/newsroom/Pages/netneutralitylitigation.aspx?utm_campaign=Newsletters&utm_source=sendgrid&utm_medium=email.  Understandably, network neutrality advocates jumped at the opportunity to provide another example of unintended bad consequences from the abandonment of open Internet regulatory safeguards.  Similarly, network neutrality opponents properly chided the company, but again championed a mostly unregulated Internet subject to the consumer protections available from the Federal Trade Commission.

            Both sides miss the main lesson from this unfortunate situation: broadband networks have become such important infrastructure that it makes absolutely no sense now to suggest that industry self-regulation will remedy anything and everything, except for the occasional privacy and data security issues which the FTC can handle.

            Broadband networks, particularly first and last mile access, are essential to effective firefighting as it is for so many other areas of commerce, self-fulfillment, democracy, governance, etc.  Common carriage status would recognize this importance.  Bear in mind that such a legal status does not require ventures to operate as monopolies, to have market power, or to operate essential facilities.  Landlords, hotel owners, competitive airlines and even wireless carriers, currently operate as common carriers.  Do not for a second buy the bogus assertion that such status disincentivizes investment and blunts profitability.  Also, no one can credibly claim that common carrier oversight is “legacy” “utility” regulation, unjustified in this currently competitive environment. Landlords, hotel owners, bus lines, car rental companies, airlines, cable television systems, wireless carriers and a host of other ventures currently comply with nondiscrimination and other common carrier requirements.

            On the other hand, even common carriers can engage in price discrimination.  Verizon most certainly did not violate common carriage law and policy, or the FCC’s 2015 network neutrality rules, by offering different tiers of service (bit rate, allowable monthly data consumption) at different price points.

            That Verizon could have dithered for even one hour on the matter of waiving data rates for fight fighters provides a clear example that too much is at stake to rely solely on the level of common sense and good business judgment of first responding customer service representatives.  The FCC and the California Public Service Commission should have had jurisdiction and the will to act immediately. 

            Who can dispute this outcome?

Being a Regulated Common Carrier Means You Never Have to Be Truly Sorry: How United Airlines Can Forcefully Evict Paying Passengers to Make Way for Non-Rev Crew

            United Airlines brought in some muscle to execute an “involuntary denied boarding” decision, well within its contractual and regulated tariff rights.  See https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-10/united-s-forcible-removal-from-overbooked-flight-triggers-outrage.

            Okay, they may have allowed the use of more force than wise, but that’s a matter of police, or rent-a-cop brutality, hardly a matter under United Airlines’ control.  Perhaps this knowledge explains the rather tone dead, unremorseful response from the CEO of United.  See https://twitter.com/united/status/851471781827420160/photo/1 He characterizes the episode as “upsetting to all of us here at United,” and he’s sorry for having to “reaccomodate” customers. 

            Reaccommodate reminds me of the word re-delivery used by local newspaper when they failed to deliver a paper in the first place.

            Nothing in the CEO Munoz statement comes within a time zone of heartfelt remorse, because United can pretty much do anything it considers necessary—even the involuntary deplaning of 4 revenue producing passengers to make way for 4 non-revenue producing crew needed to fly a future flight.

            The lesson here—and the link to telecommunications/Internet regulation—lies in the legal protections accruing to service providers vis a vis their customers.  United files a public contract, called a tariff, for air service.  This non-negotiable document offers very little consumer protection, because the carrier wrote it with carrier protection in mind and with limited, “job killing” regulatory oversight.

            Airline carriers have no duty to provide service even if they take your money, issue you a boarding pass with seat assignment and make no initial effort to block your ingress to your assigned seat.  Sure, they have to pay you for your inconvenience, but the amount cannot exceed $1350 for domestic travel. 

            $1350 is a small price for never having to say you’re really sorry.

            I have no doubt that staff and management of United consider this episode business as usual.  They will continue to overbook passengers and deny carriage to selected, unlucky passengers.

            Airline executives seem oblivious to public relations and compassion. If someone gets roughed up for tardy deplaning, it’s “outside the airline’s control.”

Reclassifying Internet Access as a Title II Regulated Telecommunications Service

           Today’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Internet access reportedly contains a section inviting comments whether the FCC should reclassify Internet access from largely unregulated information service to telecommunications service.  Should the Commission opt to do this—something months away, if at all, in light of grave political impediments—any and all concerns about discrimination do not miraculously evaporate.

            Comcast EVP David L. Cohen and others correctly note that even Title II-regulated common carriers have the option of offering different tiers and categories of service.  Telecommunications service providers cannot discriminate among “similarly situated” carriers, but nothing prevents common carriers from offering different tiers of service, i.e., to offer different price points and levels of service. Put another way, even common carriers can engage in price and quality of service discrimination provided the differentiation is cost-based and available to anyone meeting a fair list of qualifying criteria.  Nothing prohibits the FCC from approving a tariff that contains this type of permissible discrimination applied to retail broadband subscribers, or upstream to other carriers and content providers.  Additionally nothing prevents the FCC from eliminating the requirement that Internet Service Providers even file tariffs.

            Title II regulation does not toggle on an all or nothing pivot.  Section 160 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, allows the FCC to streamline and forbear from applying most common carrier regulations.  The FCC could reclassify information service at the same time as it forbears from applying most of the possibly unnecessary, costly and burdensome regulations.

             On the other hand Title II makes it clear that a carrier cannot engage in deliberate discrimination, such as dropping packets, simply to disadvantage a competitor, or to extort a surcharge payment from an upstream carrier satisfied with best efforts routing.  Title II regulated ISPs would have to operate more transparently and probably could not get away with tactics designed to generate artificial congestion as may have occurred with the slowdown of Netflix streaming video traffic.

             Here's another tricky issue from the Title II, telecom world: normally the carrier triggering the need for carriage--on behalf of its customers--incurs the cost of this service.  The FCC used to use the term "cost causative" carrier.  Under a pure ("old skool") view, it would appear that Comcast would have to compensate upstream carriers for the Netflix traffic and other demand from Comcast customers.   I don’t see this happening, just as I don’t see the FCC risking a show down with incumbents on a reclassification gambit.

Telephone Pedestals and the Second Amendment

            Once upon a time when telephone companies provided service via wires these companies secured free rights of way to install equipment and lines.  In many locations the companies replaced telephone poles with underground conduits.  When telephone companies needed to splice a service line to a home or business they installed a pedestal above ground.  These metal or plastic pedestals do not have a pleasing appearance even with the use of forest green coloration.  They were necessary splice points where telephone company technicians connected and disconnected service.

            Now that telephone companies want to provide anything but wireline telephone service it strikes me that they should lose the rights of way granted to them by state public utility commissions.  If a company does not provide common carrier telecommunications services, then surely it has no public utility right to take a portion of my property for their use free of charge.  Right?

            I mean if a telephone company no longer wants to serve as the carrier of last resort—or first resort for that matter—then they in effect should be deemed to have abandoned their right to secure a property interest in my land.  As information service providers, like VoIP service providers, former telephone companies no longer should have the right of eminent domain granted by states to bona fide public utilities.   It seems straightforward to me: if a common carrier opts to abandon its common carrier duties, then it should lose its rights of way over private property for lines that no longer provide common carrier services, and possibly won’t provide anything at  all.

            So when my telephone company terminates PSTN service access on my property, they can pull out their copper and by the way be sure to pull out the pedestal while you’re at it.  Oh and by the way, I don’t want to ever see you again on my property.  Going forward you would become a trespasser and I reserve all my Second Amendment rights to brandish a weapon to encourage one of your few information service contractors or employees to leave.

             Gee . . maybe the Tea Party, the National Rifle Association and I have something in common.

Terminating the PSTN

            A month or so ago Telecommunications Policy published my article entitled The Mixed Blessing of a Deregulatory Endpoint for the Public Switched Telephone Network.  At the time of publication I did not have the insights and clarity of purpose provided by AT&T’s bold initiative to couple a substantial increase in capital expenditure with the elimination of regulation. See http://www.att.com/Common/about_us/files/pdf/fcc_filing.pdf.

           AT&T couches its proposal as the progressive and timely replacement of copper-based telephone technology (Time Division Multiplexing) with a wireless-friendly and Internet-based standard.  Of course we should applaud new “sunk” investment in infrastructure and yes an Internet Protocol standard efficiently promotes technological and marketplace convergence.  But as I stated in the article there is more to this initiative than AT&T benevolence and competitive necessity.

            It has become clear to me that AT&T seeks to leverage “spade ready,” “job creating” investment for the following financial benefits:

1)         elimination of hundreds of thousands of jobs many of which are currently filled by union employees;

2)         billions of dollars in avoided tax liability generated by the coupling of new capital investment and the write off of most copper and obsolete switch assets that have artificially elevated values which, over the years, have rewarded AT&T and other incumbent wireline incumbents with excessive rates of return and universal service subsidies; and

3)         the replacement of common carrier regulated telecommunications services with a blend of mostly unregulated information services with a few residual telecommunications   services, such as basic wireless voice treated as common carriage, but subject to “streamlined” regulation.

           The quid pro quo that AT&T proposes surely will come across as reasonable if not generous to the uninformed and the purposefully ignorant legislator.  To be clear AT&T must upgrade its network in recognition that basic voice revenues—wireline and wireless—will decline substantially.  Why not leverage such necessary investment in exchange for a Christmas wish list of deregulatory—make that unregulatory—goals?

           Only in this purposefully ignorant and politicized environment can AT&T and other incumbents condition essential and commercially necessary change with regulatory changes that eliminate still needed safeguards.  Do we honestly think the migration from wireline service, backed up by carrier of last resort duties, to wireless service, with no geographical service mandates and rate oversight, will have no adverse impact of the current price, quality of service, availability, reliability, consumer protection and the public interest safeguards available to wireline consumers?  Didn’t AT&T claim that chronic spectrum shortages would prevent it from providing reliable service, or what that a red herring (or lie) to support its acquisition of T-Mobile?

            More fundamentally, does a change in baseline technology and medium eliminate the need for government oversight?  Exactly what does this shift do to the level of marketplace competition in basic and enhanced services?

New Publication--The Mixed Blessing of a Deregulatory Endpoint for the Public Switched Telephone Network

        Telecommunications Policy soon will publish my paper entitled The Mixed Blessing of a Deregulatory Endpoint for the Public Switched Telephone Network

        Here's the abstract:

            Receiving authority from a National Regulatory Authority to dismantle the wireline public switched telephone network (“PSTN”) will deliver a mixture of financial benefits and costs to incumbent carriers.  Even if these carriers continue to provide basic telephone services via wireless facilities or the Internet, they will benefit from the likely substantial relaxation of common carriage duties, no longer having to serve as the carrier of last resort and having the opportunity to decide where and what services they will provide going forward.  On the other hand, incumbent carriers may have underestimated the substantial financial and marketplace advantages they also will lose in the deregulatory process.

            Incumbent carriers often obscure or dismiss as insignificant the substantial privileges and benefits accruing from their status as telecommunications service providers.  Common carrier responsibilities include duties to interconnect with other carriers, provide service on transparent and nondiscriminatory terms and offer some low margin services.  But this legal status also guarantees wireline local exchange carriers in many nations access to annual universal service funding, zero or low cost access to rights of way and radio spectrum, accelerated depreciation and other tax benefits, the ability to vertically integrate throughout the “food chain” of telecommunications services and dominant status in the administration of telephone numbers, standard setting and other policy issues.  Incumbents will strive to capture deregulatory benefits while retaining the many benefits previously reserved for common carriers.

        This paper will identify the potential problems resulting from the decision by the United States Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) to grant authority for telecommunications service providers to discontinue PSTN services.  The paper also will consider whether in the absence of common carrier duties, carriers providing telephone services, including Voice over the Internet Protocol (“VoIP”), voluntarily will agree to interconnect their networks.  The paper will examine Internet peering and other types of network interconnection with an eye toward assessing whether a largely unregulated marketplace can ensure ubiquitous access to PSTN replacement services. 

        The paper concludes that private carrier interconnection models and information service regulatory oversight may not solve all disputes, or foreclose price discrimination for functionally the same type of service.   Recent Internet interconnection and television program carriage disputes involving major players such as Comcast, Level 3, Fox and Cablevision, point to the possibility of increasingly contentious negotiations that could result in balkanized telecommunications networks with reversed or reduced progress in achieving universal service goals.  The paper also concludes that rural access to VoIP and other voice communications services could end up costing significantly more than what urban residents pay, an efficient, but politically risky outcome.

Compulsory Data Roaming: The FCC Imposes a Duty to Deal

     The FCC’s recent Second Report and Order on data roaming obligations of facilities-based wireless carriers (see http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-11-52A1.doc) requires interconnection backed up with the power to resolve formal complaints if commercially driven negotiations fail.  The two Republican Commissioners dissented from the order based on the view that the FCC lacks jurisdiction to compel information service providers to interconnect.  The Democratic majority relies primarily on the view that Title III confers broad regulatory power over any venture using licensed spectrum, not just radio and television broadcasters.

     This order shows the FCC at its creative best.  The authors of the order manage to replace the failed Title I, ancillary jurisdiction rationale with an expansive interpretation of Title III, while avoiding the inconvenient fact that the Commission treats wireless broadband and data services as information services not subject to Title II oversight.  In this order the Commission creates a non common carrier duty to deal, i.e., wireless carriers must interconnect their data networks and provide access to roaming data service subscribers who take service from another unaffiliated carrier.

     Only AT&T and Verizon opposed the FCC’s efforts to remedy a market failure resulting from insufficient competitive necessity for the two major carriers voluntarily to offer reciprocal data roaming agreements.   The FCC correctly identified a problem that could prevent consumers from relying on their smartphones as mobile computers, but the Commission’s rationale may not pass muster with a reviewing court. 

     The FCC appears to impose a duty to deal on carriers based primarily on their use of spectrum and the Commission’s broad mandate to service the public interest.  By concentrating on Title III and the broad mandate in Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to promote Internet access, the Commission hopes it can impose a conventional common carrier interconnection obligation even in the absence of explicit statutory authority.  Because Title II cannot apply directly to data roaming, the FCC frames the interconnection obligation as a “spectrum usage condition” (¶66) and not a common carrier obligation.  The Commission presumes that this characterization makes it possible to maneuver around the limitation contained in Section 332 that limits the application of streamlined Title II common carrier obligations only to voice services that connect with conventional wireline telephone networks.   The Commission summarily states that it does not have to make the determination whether and how Sec. 332 applies, if more broadly all or other sections within Title III applies.

     The FCC attempts to differentiate compulsory data roaming interconnection from common carriage, by emphasizing that wireless carriers will not apply single, tariffed terms and conditions.  So in the Commission’s creative interpretation, a common carrier obligation does not exist when a carrier is compelled to negotiate on an individualized, carrier-specific manner. But surely the Commission has created a duty to deal and common carriage means only that a carrier must offer nondiscriminatory terms and conditions to one or more “similarly situated” users.  In other words the common carrier duty to provide service to all people “indifferently” can result in a tariff or contract serving just one user or carrier, because no other user or carrier has similar usage requirements.  For example, the fact that the United States government might have specific and large requirements unmatched by other users does not by itself convert service from Title II regulated common carriage to private carriage.

     The FCC’s dilemma results from the misguided decision to apply the deregulated “safe harbor” information service classification to any and all types of wired and wireless Internet access.  It seemed good at the time: a hands off the Internet commitment.  The Commisison had to construct creative distinctions between offering and providing telecommunications and between a standalone and identifiable telecommunications service and a telecommunications that becomes so integrated into an information service as to be inseparable.  Of course wireless carriers use telecommunications to link subscribers’ smartphones to a wireless data network via telecommunications.  But in the FCC’s mindset, a venture can qualify for complete deregulation if the Commission can identify an information service.  That’s how the FCC made it possible to reclassify Digital Subscriber Line service as non common carriage and that’s also how the Commission made it possible to convert wireless telephone companies into information service providers.

     Had the Commission shown some restraint in its zeal to deregulate it would not have to erect clever and largely unsustainable statutory interpretations to resurrect limited, but essential consumer safeguards.

Having Its Cake and Eating it Too--Shirking Common Carriage While Retaining Rights of Way Access and Other Benefits

AT&T's new gambit to rid itself of pesky Title II common carrier responsibilities prompts me to ask (and tentatively answer) this question: when, if ever, do Title II carriers lose common carrier/public utility free or below market access to rights of way and other benefits designed to offset the costs of common carriage? Put another way: do information service providers have any rights to public utility upside opportunities.

Some time ago, Comcast decided it wanted to install a mini-refrigerator sized amplifier on my property, ostensibly to "improve" service. For the sake of discussion, let's assume the amplifier had nothing to do with its cable service and its installation would not raise questions about the scope of rights of way available to Title VI regulated cable operators. In other words, the amplifier enhances Title I lightly regulated information services, such as broadband. I took issue with the installation of the eyesore, mostly because Comcast did not see the need to inform me of its "need." I argued that Comcast did not have the legal right to bootstrap its existing cable service right of way to install a new pedestal having not connection to its limited purpose right of way.

Comcast refused to engage me in a dialog, but they did dismantle the mini-refrigerator apparently installing it elsewhere.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 illogically and probably unintentionally toggles between the use of the term telecommunications provider and telecommunications service provider.when addressing access to rights of way issues. We now know the FCC--with approval by the Supreme Court in Brand X--differentiates the two terms. But for purposes of rights of way, the Commission very well may not differentiate. Bootstraping the same sections of the Act to justify its jurisdiction to make federal Internet policy, the Commission probably would claim that even information service providers need rights of way to promote universal access to advanced telecommunications capabilities (Sec. 706) which in practice includes Internet access and arguably some types of information services.

In a nutshell it seems to me AT&T and others can further shirk its common carrier/public utility obligations while continuing to exploit rights of way access and other benefits.

Such a deal.