Internet Provider Sonic's CEO: Title II Is Only A Regulatory Burden If You're Doing Something Bad
from the it's-that-simple dept
A few weeks back, I was a guest on the famed TWiT netcast, on a special episode mostly about net neutrality. You can see it at that link (I tried to embed, but it appears, unfortunately, that TWiT doesn't do HTTPS embeds -- something I hope the TWiT folks will fix in the near future).However, this post has nothing to do with me being on the show, but rather something that was said by Sonic's CEO Dane Jasper concerning net neutrality and Title II: that Title II is only a "regulatory burden" if you're an ISP that's doing bad stuff to consumers. Much of the first hour was a discussion between Jasper and another small ISP owner, Brett Glass, who has been rather vehement in his dislike of net neutrality or Title II. Glass brought up a key talking point that big ISPs and other anti-Title II people have made repeatedly: that using Title II would be a huge regulatory burden, "burying ISPs in red tape" (as Glass noted). Yet Jasper explained how that's just not true, and, in fact, he's not at all worried about the "regulatory burden" because as long as he's not doing anything to muck up your connection, there's basically no additional regulatory issue (this is from about 27 minutes into the show):
Dane: I think that the more substantial risk is to the Internet and web properties, particularly new innovative web properties. If there isn't some regulation around what carriers who dominate the marketplace can do to that traffic. So that I see, the threat to the Internet is the top priority, and Brett talks about an insurmountable amount of red tape. Today, Internet service providers are required to publish for the FCC a disclosure of traffic management practices. So we publish a disclosure. I think it says we don't touch your bits. We don't modify, we don't filter, we don't engage in deep pack inspection. So, I think from a compliance perspective, if the assumption is that Title II will be by and large gutted, or rather they engage in forbearance of all provisions and begin to re-enable provisions that allow them to assure the traffic is treated equally, my expectation is those of use that treat traffic equally will have a pretty light regulatory burden.This line has stuck with me, because the argument that Title II is burying service providers in regulation just keeps coming up. It was brought up recently by Mark Cuban in the comments to our post about Cuban's view of net neutrality. And yet, the key parts of Title II that are important for these net neutrality rules are really pretty limited. Sections 201 and 202 are the key ones, and do very little in terms of adding "red tape" to being an ISP. They just talk about not allowing the service provider to engage in unreasonable discrimination.
Yet, as Dane notes, so long as you stick to net neutrality, and you make it clear to the FCC (as is already required) that you don't muck with people's connections, the actual "regulatory burden" will be absolutely minimal. And that's from someone who will clearly have to deal with it. So, that should probably make you wonder: when ISPs argue that there will be a massive regulatory burden associated with Title II, just what sorts of games are they planning to play with your traffic to encounter such a regulatory burden?
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: brett glass, dane jasper, isps, regulations, title ii, twit
Companies: sonic.net
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
ISP reporting requirements
The quote:
"Internet service providers are required to publish for the FCC a disclosure of traffic management practices"
-- no --
BROADBAND Internet Service Providers are required to...
The rest of the ISPs including the WISPs and the wireless telephone carriers are not.
E
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: ISP reporting requirements
The FCC's traffic management disclosure requirements apply to all facilities-based last-mile Internet access providers. This includes wireless ISPs.
Wireless providers also need to file FCC 477 forms, but many do not, which is a shame because then others can receive federal funding to build out an "unserved" area, based upon the records and maps.
The regulatory burdens of being a facilities based ISP are not substantial, but they are important.
-Dane Jasper
CEO
Sonic
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Title II
1) Prices on service go down to match the lowest prices for the lowest level of service (e.g., 5Mbps)
2) Download speeds shoot up to match (or come close to matching the highest level of service (a la Austin, TX).
Drop the usage caps, and just limit it by service level, 5Mbps, 20Mbs, 1000Mbs, whatever.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Title II
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Famous last words ...
Really really naive.
"if the assumption is that Title II will be by and large gutted, or rather they engage in forbearance of all provisions ...will have a pretty light regulatory burden."
One can assert anything about the future one likes, but you need to add the caveat ... I am asserting something that is contrary actual practice of Title II for the last 80 years.
The headline reminds me of the defense of ubiquitous surveillance - it is only a problem if you are doing something wrong.
Others have explained the forebearance process requires a case by case data intensive finding. The FCC must collect a bunch of information about an activity to decide it does not need to regulate an activity. The FCC cannot wave a wand and make the provisions of Title II go away. Each of the 1000 provisions requires a separate proceeding. Since the invention of forebearance with the 1996 Act, the FCC has managed to make it through only 200 forebearance proceedings (each 18 months and 50% ended with a negative result).
The notion of burden-only-if-you-do-something-wrong was demonstrated as nonsense in a recent FCC proceeding. The FCC received 768 complaints of telephone calls not completing (aka I dialed a number and the call did not go through) that seemed concentrated around rural dialed numbers.
What was the FCC response? A new reporting requirement imposed on ALL operators (including Skype et al) to send call completion data to the FCC on a quarterly basis covering the 1 trillion calls placed in the US each year.
This imposes an IT project on the 99.9999% of operators not implicated in the 768 complaints. Forget that sending old call completion data to a building full of 1200 lawyers in DC will make no difference to solve the original problem. Forget that operators point to cost and time burdens 100x the FCC estimate. Forget that the inherent uncertainty in the data (aka - why does or does not a call complete) makes the new reporting to the FCC useless. No one thinks the new reporting will help address the issue. The reporting is imposed because of the political leverage of rural senators over the FCC and a need to be seen to do something.
I will stop here and not get into the fact the FCC admits to no privacy implications in the fact the new reporting rule expands the types metadata retained, expands the amount of time the data gets retained, and standardizes the labeling of metadata across operators has for the enormous upset Title II champions express in another sphere.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Famous last words ...
Or do you think that there aren't any problems in the first place?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Famous last words ...
Thanks. Let's proceed carefully as you describe and recognize a description (of reality or not) of a *problem* and the implementation of a *solution* (successful or not) represent separate activities.
Title II fans seem to assume justification of Title II requires only making a compelling case for the problem. I am trying to assert you need to look very carefully at the proposed to solution to know whether or not the cure is worse than the disease.
"Or do you think that there aren't any problems in the first place?"
The distinction I make is between *actual* and *future* problems. Government intervention becomes most problematic in the context of pre-crime and future problems. Take your pick of examples such as Japanese internment or the collect everything surveillance state.
The telecom industry is in the process of retiring one network (voice only PSTN) and expanding another (data for everything IP network). I submit all of the descriptions of the problem reflect conditions that no longer exist or will cease to exist by the end of the IP transition. I submit we do not know whether or not the problems of the bad ole days will persist.
I recognize the communicating public will never rest easy regarding mega corporate control over our beloved communication capacity. This does not translate by definition to government intervention as it did in 1934, because - government is much less effective, technology moves much faster, and the communicating public needs to overcome learned helplessness.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Famous last words ...
Go spend an hour or two on Reddit, and then work out what it would be like if the different video sources used were served at different speeds, and no two ISPs provided the fast lane to the same set.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Famous last words ...
I suspect that this is where we differ. I'm not worried about theoretical problems or whether the problems of the bad ole days will persist. I'm worried about the very real and tangible problems with ISP misbehavior that we have right now.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Famous last words ...
No one would be screaming about regulations if the companies involved acted like they gave 2 shits about their customers.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Famous last words ...
1) Title II burdens included with the benefits;
2) Local Loop Unblundling, for easier transfer of accounts;
3) Punitive fines for overbilling more than 2% of customers/yesr, mediansed out on a month-by-month basis;
4) Divesting content from ISP ownership, and vice-versa;
5) Remove the Spectrum auction, and move to a full-on licensing schema (the ISPs rent the bandwidth from the government based on a scaling amount of demand (primarily wireless ISPs);
6) Enforce roaming access at a lower cost;
7) Allow for the capacity, after a year, to transfer from one provider to another outside of complaints issues;
8) Enforce neutrality outside of standard network-management practices.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Famous last words ...
Guess what, the FCC is in collusion with them as it is THE duty of the FCC to see that we have MANY sources of information, not from a select few. Don't believe me?
Supreme Court stated in Red Lion v. FCC in 1969: “It is the purpose of the First Amendment to preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail, rather than to countenance monopolization of that market, whether it be by the Government itself or a private licensee. It is the right of the public to receive suitable access to social, political, esthetic, moral, and other ideas and experiences which is crucial here. That right may not constitutionally be abridged either by Congress or by the FCC.”
Limit what can be seen, heard, read, watched and you control the minds of the country. What does this have to do with the net? Quite a bit. One of the things those who serve within our governments like least about the net is that we communicate all over, we can discover lies soon after they are told, false flag events are brought out into the open, etc.
Likewise, when there is someone, a group, etc that is actually working towards our nation under its legitimate government they can be made known all over in a very short time (Re: Ron Paul's messages, background, voting record, etc was spread throughout the net which garnered him so much publicity and votes, even from the US military away on foreign shores.
This caused the US military "High Command" to refuse to let them vote because they were for RP. It is also why the Republican convention "changed the rules" at the convention. Why Election Fraud was brought out into the public, but hard to get into court even with MULTIPLE people providing proof, etc. It is proven he won the Republican presidential nomination to run against Obama, but that could not be allowed).
Harder still is to get information to the people on Election Fraud that isn't immediately wiped (cleaned off the net) such as these:
The 2008 Democratic Nominating Committee (DNC) document did not include the normal language stating that Obama was qualified to be a candidate. The 2008 Republican Nominating Committee (RNC) document did, as is normal. This shows that the DNC knew that Obama was not qualified, or why change the form?
AND South Bend, Indiana jury found that Election Fraud put BOTH Obama and Hillary Clinton on the presidential primary ballot in Indiana in the 2008 election.
The people's voice in the elections was quieted, shut up even; but on the net we are fighting to keep our "voice" here in the USA.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Famous last words ...
These are precisely the reasons why the government needs involved and why Title II has to be put in place.
By their own actions they have set up the reasons why extra data has to be reported along with all the associated time spent doing so.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Famous last words ...
So yes, Title II might be a bit unwieldy if you attempt to go beyond providing standard service -- but that fault lies at the feet of companies such as AT&T who abused the market relationship the last time around. Not implementing any of those provisions just invites the same old foul play to return to a slightly different medium.
This isn't a case of "if you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to hide" -- it's a case of "If you plan to do any of these things that have a proven history of being abused, you will need to also provide ample proof that you're not abusing them in a similar way." Very few of those activities are required to be an ISP. They're only required to make slightly more profit off your customers, or if you've grown so large that there is a potential conflict of interest (due to monopolies, being a service AND content provider, etc).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Famous last words ...
They have proven you have to force them to behave. They only respect carrot and stick. Nothing in between.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Famous last words ...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Famous last words ...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Famous last words ...
Yes, it's exactly like that.
Except for the fact that one involves a government violation of fundamental human rights and the other sets limited conditions on companies that have been granted effective monopoly power over internet infrastructure.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Famous last words ...
Not true. Plenty of cases have shown otherwise.
http://www.wetmachine.com/tales-of-the-sausage-factory/title-ii-forbearance-is-actually-so -easy-it-makes-me-want-to-puke/
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Famous last words ...
I am aware of Harold's post from July (as you will see my comment there as well).
Please read what Harold actually says. Aside from a cute title the post consumes 3000 words to outline the convoluted process forebearance in two cases establishing the FCC authority to forebear...I guess to prove it is possible.
Yes. Forebearance is possible.
I am arguing something different - the status quo information services status of IP networks requires no proceedings at the FCC to reach a presumption of non-regulation.
Forebearance involves a statute by statue process.
Giving up a non-regulation presumption in favor of an 18 month FCC proceeding on each of 1000 provisions in Title II will prove deadly to the entire information technology ecosystem (and terrific for billable hours)
The Harold post describes the convoluted process for just two examples which hardly makes me feel better about 1000.
The DC Circuit recently denied a forebearance appeal around a reporting requirement and affirmed the need for provision by provision proceedings.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Famous last words ...
Yes. And that's why we're facing a bit of a problem now with the big broadband players trying to mess up the internet.
Giving up a non-regulation presumption in favor of an 18 month FCC proceeding on each of 1000 provisions in Title II will prove deadly to the entire information technology ecosystem (and terrific for billable hours)
Almost all of this assumes that there will be parties fighting back against the forbearance. Who's actually going to do that? Basically everyone agrees that if we go to Title II nearly all of it needs forbearance. The forbearance fights of the past have been cases where some parties are for forbearance and some are against. Here, basically everyone supports forbearance, so there's almost nothing to fight over.
And, really, I'm a hell of a lot more concerned about the "entire information technology ecosystem" in a world where the big ISPs get to set up toll booths.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
the classic if you're doing nothing wrong defense...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Its a real burden to have to treat your customers with respect and common courtesy.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
If it's good enough for the NSA...
If they've done nothing wrong, they have nothing to worry about.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Title II
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Title II
Yes, Sonic.net may have originated as a CLEC (I actually do use their DSL services over an AT&T circuit, which they apparently no longer offer to new customers)... but they are a hell of a lot better than AT&T at everything else anyway.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Title II
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Title II
And while it is great they are deploying fiber, their last-mile fiber footprint is miniscule compared to their ADSL2 footprint.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Title II
Agreed with that. Have regular DSL from these guys, I am waiting for them to make their fiber offering to my place.
That is, if Google fiber doesn't reach me first...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Unintended consequences
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Unintended consequences
I'd be fine with that if we get better behavior from the ISPs in exchange for it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Unintended consequences
Better behavior from a select few large ISPs. The overwhelming vast majority of ISPs in the US are not misbehaving.
People seem to forget that the residential internet access in the US is made up of well over a thousand ISPs. Not just Comcast/Verizon/At&t.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Unintended consequences
Yes, that's correct.
"People seem to forget that the residential internet access in the US is made up of well over a thousand ISPs. Not just Comcast/Verizon/At&t."
I don't think people forget it so much as realize that it's not terribly important. Most people in the nation get their internet service from one of the big guys. In the region I live in, anyway, most people have no choice about who their ISP is.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Unintended consequences
If that's true, where are they? The vast, vast majority of discussions I've seen (in multiple forums) are people who say they've got one, possibly two if they're lucky, option to choose from.
Is that number constant, rising, or falling, and how fast? In my case I have three options; two telcos and a cable provider. There's no small ISPs here like I used to use. They've been swallowed up by the big boys.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Unintended consequences
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Unintended consequences
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
BTW, the video of Episode 484 of TWiT can be downloaded in any of four formats from that same link.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
If they feel as if they would be buried in red tape, well, they have the money and time to deal with it. Try being millions of individuals having to cope with that bullshit on their own time and pay for the privilege.
While I'm not a huge fan of the "If you aren't doing anything wrong" fallacy, sometimes it isn't a fallacy but an accurate description. And in the case where the wrong behaviors clearly exist, and where the consequences neither abridge rights, nor detain, nor invade individual privacy. This is more a case of, "If you are swinging a hammer at someone at your feet, we're going to make sure they aren't in the way. Go ahead and hit your foot with it." Never mind that they will just dump BS stats on the FCC anyway like they do with everything else.
They've all been very happy with the provisions that let the charge people extra, by law, and pocket that cash without ever doing a damn thing. Let's have some onerous item by item reviews on that. Those who have to abide by Title II have suffered soooo much.
Regulations can be bad. They can be turned around and abused by those who were supposed to be regulated. They might be harmful to business or customers. Best way to avoid this is to stop demanding to be regulated by using business practices akin to the behavior of an uncontrolled and greedy psychopathic child.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
It needs to be said...
After I got on Twitter and bemoaned the lack of competition among ISPs in my city, he told me I was misguided, because there was plenty of competition provided by WISPs out there. Never mind the fact that:
1. A bit of Googling failed to uncover an WISPs in the Raleigh-Durham area, and
2. I live in an apartment, so even if a WISP existed, I couldn't put up an antenna to use it.
So what, I'm supposed to move into a house in another city to conform to Brett Glass' little Wyoming fantasy world? Right. When I challenged him to find a WISP, any WISP, here in the Triangle, he offered no help and just told me I was delusional and there was no hope for me.
Brett Glass has no clue what the vast majority of consumers have to go through in this country with their internet access. I blocked him on Twitter. You should, too.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: It needs to be said...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: It needs to be said...
I think you will eventually learn that Brett Glass and all the other spokes-persons of his ilk, know precisely to 9 decimal places, "what the vast majority of consumers have to go through in this country with their internet access", and that he and they are hoping to triple and quadruple the number of hoops that the vast majority must jump through to successfully negotiate the use of their internet connection, with a cash register on the far side of each hoop.
The apparent ignorance is a planned blissful defense, but it is as utterly false as that of every politician and businessman before him, who has ever used the same ploy as a defense.
Such pretend ignorance allows lying with impunity, because everyone thinks you simply do not know any better.
---
[ link to this | view in chronology ]