FCC Moves To Make Life Easier For Business Broadband Monopolies

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

By now, most people understand that the residential broadband market simply isn't very competitive. They also understand that's in large part due to the lobbying and financial stranglehold many providers have over both state and federal lawmakers and regulators. But however uncompetitive the residential broadband market is, the business "special access market" (often called Business Data Services (BDS)) is notably worse. This important but overlooked segment of the telecom market connects schools, cell towers, ATMs, retailers, and countless others to the internet at large.

But consumer groups and smaller companies for years have complained that this segment suffers under an absurd amount of monopoly control, resulting in many companies and organizations paying sky-high rates for basic connectivity. According to the FCC's own data (pdf), in the lion's share of markets, 73% of the special access market is controlled by one provider (usually AT&T, CenturyLink or Verizon), 24% usually "enjoys" duopoly control, and only a tiny fraction of markets have more than two choices of BDS providers providing this key connectivity.

After ten years of industry bickering and lobbying, Tom Wheeler last year began seriously exploring changes to special access rules, including price caps on how much these monopolies and duopolies can charge smaller companies (and in wireless, smaller competitors). By and large the FCC avoids broadband price caps like the plague, and the effort to impose limits on the BDS market reflected just how incredibly uncompetitive the special access market had become. But the rules were never finalized, and new FCC boss Ajit Pai was quick to throw away the decade-long reform effort.

Instead, Pai has proposed deregulating this captive market even further, a massive win to the incumbent monopolies and duopolies that control it. In a blog post, the FCC boss was quick to insist that competition in this sector is actually growing, and his (read: AT&T and Verizon's) proposal will be sure to keep regulations in place in areas where it isn't:

"The extensive record compiled by the Commission’s excellent staff shows substantial and growing competition in many areas of the country, thanks to new market entrants like cable companies. Where this competition exists, we will relax unnecessary regulation, thereby creating greater incentives for the private sector to invest in next-generation networks. But where competition is still lacking, we’ll preserve regulations necessary to prevent anti-competitive price increases."

But, as with much of Pai's particular brand of FCC leadership, what the FCC boss says -- and what he does -- are often very different things. Ars Technica is quick to highlight that Pai's proposal has a rather unique definition of "competition." Namely, the proposal declares a market "competitive" if there's just one additional broadband provider anywhere in a half mile radius:

"Pai's definition of "sufficient competition" has drawn fire. The plan would treat an entire county as competitive "if 50 percent of the locations with BDS demand in that county are within a half mile of a location served by a competitive provider." A county would also be considered competitive if 75 percent of Census blocks in the county have a cable provider."

Pai is part of a segment of revolving door regulators and other industry allies that often comically deny any competition issues in the broadband space -- whatsoever. Their solution is consistently blind and blanket deregulation, laboring under the belief that less regulatory oversight -- combined with no real competition -- somehow magically forges telecom Utopia. And while deregulation certainly does aid competitive, innovative markets, blind deregulation of the telecom market time and time again only serves to make competition issues worse. Just ask a Comcast customer.

The FCC is poised to vote on the deregulation of the uncompetitive BDS market on April 20 (and likely already voted to approve this effort by the time you read this). Lawmakers like Senator Ed Markey and Rep. Ed Doyle had urged the FCC to delay the vote:

"In the BDS market, we need more protections for competitors and small businesses, not great market control by incumbents,” they wrote. “We are concerned that the proposed BDS Report and Order does not adequately promote competition or apply appropriate pricing protections where competition does not exist."

BDS being an important but wonky and under the radar market for consumers and the press -- Pai should be able to ram this vote through without much public scrutiny. As such, Pai's moves to gut rules governing the BDS market are set to join a growing chorus of other "accomplishments" we've seen so far under Pai, such as making it easier for prison monopolies to rip off inmates, the dismantling of efforts to improve cable box competition, the erosion of efforts to bring broadband to the poor, and his looming attempt to kill net neutrality. You'll notice one, consistent beneficiary to Pai's agenda -- and it sure as hell isn't you.

Filed Under: ajit pai, bds, broadband, competition, fcc, monopolies

Bad Take: Rep. Sensenbrenner's Response Over Internet Privacy Concerns: 'Nobody's Got To Use The Internet'

from the and-nobody's-got-to-vote-for-you-either dept

As we've explained, with Congress voting (and the President signing) a bill to kill off the FCC's broadband privacy rules, things are not necessarily as bad as some might have you believe, but they're still bad. And lots and lots of people seem to be asking their elected representatives why they did this. After all, despite the fact that the vast majority of both Republican and Democratic voters supported the rules (as they did with net neutrality rules as well...), in Congress everyone lined up along party lines over this issue, with Republican members of Congress voting down the rules.

At least some are now facing backlash over this... and they don't seem to be handling it well. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner seems to have what may be the worst possible take on this after being asked about it. He told a constituent, to maybe just not use the internet if you don't like it. That linked article only has part of the quote, but here's the video of the question and the response:

The questioner points out, correctly, that for individual services, like Facebook, people have a choice of how much they actually use them or what info they give, but for your overall ISP that's not true -- and also notes that there aren't competitive options. Sensenbrenner's answer is... maddeningly nonsensical and wrong, and basically ignores everything the questioner just said to him:

"You know, again, nobody's got to use the internet. And the thing is, if you start regulating the internet like a utility, if you did that right at the beginning, we'd have no internet. Internet companies have invested an awful lot of money in having almost universal services, now. And the fact is, you know, I don’t think it’s my job to tell you that you cannot get advertising through your information being sold. My job, I think, is to tell you that you have the opportunity to do it and then you take it upon yourself to make the choice that the government should give you. And that's what the law has been and I think we ought to have more choices, rather than fewer choices, with the government controlling our everyday lives.”

Now, it's a live situation, and perhaps Rep. Sensenbrenner misspoke. But, no, his press office doubled down on this when someone called it out on Twitter. Amusingly, the press office was trying to parse the difference between "don't use the internet" (as a Tweeter claimed Sensenbrenner said) and "you have a choice" which is... well... not a very big difference, despite his press office claiming it's a "big difference."

The idea that people "have a choice" in using the internet today is laughably out of touch. Indeed, so many things that people rely on today pretty much require the internet. Jobs, transportation, housing and more frequently require the internet. And, to put an even stronger "WTF" on Sensenbrenner's misguided statement: a big part of the problem here is the very lack of choice. The vast majority of Americans have no real choice when it comes to getting true broadband access -- as the very questioner stated, and which Sensenbrenner totally ignored. Thanks to bad policies, we have a non-competitive market, where if you want broadband, you basically have to go with one company, and then it gets access to a ton of data about you.

If Sensenbrenner truly meant what he said here, he'd have been against rolling back the rules. As small ISP boss Dane Jasper recently noted on our podcast, without these privacy rules, it actually gives the giant providers that much more power over the smaller upstarts, and makes it harder for the small providers to compete.

Also, Sensenbrenner is simply flat out wrong with his argument about "if the internet was regulated like a utility at the beginning" because it WAS regulated like a utility at the beginning and it resulted in tons of competition and innovation. Indeed, for most of the internet's early rise it was treated as a utility in terms of things like open access and line sharing. And privacy rules. It's only more recently that that went away.

Also, I have no clue what Sensenbrenner is trying to say when he says: "I don't think it's my job to tell you that you cannot get advertising through your information being sold. My job, I think, is to tell you that you have the opportunity to do it and then you take it upon yourself to make the choice that the government should give you." What does that even mean? First of all, it was the FCC's job, and it did so. What Sensenbrenner did here was to roll back what the FCC said. Second, even with the rules, it never said that "you cannot get advertising through your information being sold." All the rules did was say that ISPs had to tell you about it and offer clear options on how you controlled your data. Third, seriously, what is he saying when he says his job is "to tell you that you have the opportunity to do it and then you take it upon yourself to make the choice that the government should give you." I honestly keep reading that sentence and cannot parse it. The privacy rules were what gave individuals choices. It gave them choices in how their data could be used. Rolling back those rules takes away the choice.

For years, we've pointed out that Congress appears totally and completely out of touch when it comes to basic tech policy -- especially related to the internet. Jim Sensenbrenner's vote and statements on this issue have only confirmed that basic fact.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, fcc, internet, jim sensenbrenner, privacy

Yes, There Are Other Laws That Protect Privacy, But FCC's Rules Were Still Helpful

from the setting-the-record-straight dept

There's been a lot of hype and confusion about Congress's decision (supported by the new FCC) to kill off the broadband privacy rules that were put in place late last year by the Tom Wheeler FCC, though they had not yet been officially implemented. As we noted, it's an unfortunate exaggeration (pushed by some well meaning folks) to say that ISPs will now be packaging up and selling individuals' specific browsing history. That's just not true. Some people responded to us by noting that just because that's not how the ad market works today, it doesn't mean that won't change. But... that's probably not the case. Don't get me wrong: getting rid of these privacy rules is still a really bad idea, but let's look a little deeper at what ISPs can't do, before we explain why those privacy rules are still important.

First off, as we noted, the market for internet data is not in sharing some sort of dossier on what you like, but rather connecting into a marketplace, where the information is shared for the purpose of displaying ads, but not in a way where your actual info goes to the advertiser. That is, when you, say, go shopping for a camera, and then start seeing ads for cameras everywhere, it's not that the camera makers now know that you, Joe Schmoe, like cameras. Instead, what happens is that some company took that info (Joe Schmoe is shopping for cameras) and that gets put into a marketplace where some real time bidding happens for ad placement, such that when Joe Schmoe visits another site, there's a near instantaneous call out for who will pay the most for the ad slot, and with that info is, effectively, this otherwise anonymous person was just looking at cameras, and the camera company will say "I'll pay an extra $0.0002 for that ad compared to the TV maker" and thus the camera ad gets shown. The camera maker or retailer never knows its Joe Schmoe, and doesn't somehow "know" anything more about Joe.

But... but... but... people say. There are data brokers out there who do sell more personalized profiles on you. And... that's true. Many of those companies are pretty awful. But that's unrelated to any of this. And, no, the ISPs can't just turn themselves into the next big data brokers.

Even without the privacy rules, there are rules that prevent that from happening. Section 222 of the Communications Act still stops carriers from selling your info. Of course, that's part of Title II of the Telecom act, so if the FCC or Congress figure out a way to roll back Title II, there is at least some greater concern. Separately, as Orin Kerr notes at the Washington Post, certain other "surveillance" activities by service providers are limited by the Wiretap Act -- and there are some fairly stiff penalties should a broadband provider end up on the wrong side of that. Kerr (and others) have used these laws to suggest that the privacy rules repeal isn't that big of a deal. That's inaccurate.

Both of these things can be true: repealing the privacy rules does not magically create a free-for-all with your ISPs out there "selling" your browsing history to the highest bidder and the privacy rules were useful and should not have been repealed.

The issues are -- as with so many things -- a bit more nuanced than folks on either side of the debate are making them out to be. Again, part of this goes back to the way in which online advertising works and the ways in which your data is mined and used.

Broadband providers have a fairly terrible history in respecting your privacy. No, they haven't been directly selling browsing history dossiers, but they do have long histories of snooping on you in ways that were (1) totally hidden from you and (2) extremely difficult to block. Both AT&T and Verizon, for example, were caught using nearly undetectable "super cookies" to secretly track users across multiple devices and networks -- which (despite promises that they couldn't be abused) were abused by advertisers.

And this gets back to another point that I've made repeatedly over the years: privacy is not a "thing," rather privacy is about a set of trade-offs, in which individuals recognize that they give up some privacy for some benefit and then get to decide if it's worth the trade-off. The extreme example I've used in the past is that if you leave your home to go to the store to buy some milk, you are giving up a tiny bit of privacy. Someone may see you leaving your house. They may recognize you. They may see that you're buying some milk. For most people, it's easy to judge the costs and benefits of that trade-off and to decide that the minimal loss of privacy is worth it for the ability to buy the milk (some people -- such as celebrities with paparazzi followings -- may view the trade-off differently).

But the really important thing in privacy settings is making sure that two things are true for individuals: (1) that they have the information necessary to weigh the benefits and costs of the trade-offs and (2) they have some control over those trade-offs and can adjust at least some aspects of them, by having the options be more granular and controllable.

The problem with ISP snooping and the related advertising efforts is that neither of these conditions tends to be met. The snooping is done in a way that is surreptitious and not at all clear to the end user, and their ability to control how it's done, and perhaps change some of the factors involved, is basically non-existent. The FCC's rules (somewhat weakly) were put in place to change that. First, they required more transparency about what your access provider was actually doing and, second, gave the end user more control by requiring opt-ins to particularly "expensive" behavior and opt-outs to less privacy-invasive offerings.

This is what makes people -- quite reasonably -- upset. If they were given transparent understanding of what was happening, with at least some ability to control the situation, then they could decide for themselves what information is worth giving up for what services. But, instead, the internet access industry and the online ad industry apparently continue to believe that the only way they can do what they want to do is to trick people into letting themselves be spied on, and to hide the reality of the situation. This is dumb, and will do much more harm than good to the internet in the long run.

The danger here is not so much that Verizon will be selling me the websites that you visited. It's that these ISPs, which get tremendous insight into where you surf, will make use of that data in ways you don't understand and don't control, and do things that make you feel more and more uncomfortable, and less interested in using services that can and do provide tremendous benefit. That is not good for anyone. It makes people less trustful of their services, and less willing to use the internet in unique and innovative ways. If there were a truly competitive broadband market, then that situation would be limited. Verizon or AT&T's bad behavior would be limited, because people could go elsewhere. But the issue we have today, in the US especially, is that for many users, there really are no other options -- which is why those companies have been repeatedly caught doing those kinds of sketchy, privacy-invasive things in ways that its paying subscribers both are kept in the dark about and given little to no way to block.

So, no, these new privacy rules won't create new data markets of your browsing history -- and, yes, there are other laws in place that block them from doing truly egregious activity. But the lack of a competitive market, and the nature of online advertising, combined with the fairly stupid belief that people need to be tricked into giving up their info, creates a dangerous environment, one that will harm both end users and innovation. The former FCC privacy rules took a (very small) baby step towards preventing that kind of situation... and now they're dead.

Filed Under: ajit pai, broadband, congress, fcc, privacy, wiretap act

FCC Kills Charter Merger Condition That Would Have Forced ISPs To Compete

from the let's-ignore-the-obvious dept

While FCC boss Ajit Pai has repeatedly claimed his top priority while running the FCC is eliminating the digital divide, his behavior in just the first few months of his term has made that claim utterly and indisuptably laughable. It doesn't take a sociology degree to realize that Pai's recent decisions to protect prison phone monopolies, protect the cable box monopoly, undermine efforts to bring broadband to the poor and dismantle net neutrality solely help one particular constituency: the telecom sector's biggest, wealthiest, and most powerful providers.

And while repealing a previous FCC's policies isn't entirely new or unexpected (especially from somebody with Pai's extremely mono/duopoly friendly voting record), Pai has been pushing his purview even further. Last week the FCC boss announced that he'd even begun stripping away at the conditions attached to Charter's $79 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks.

While the FCC has a history of relatively toothless merger conditions (often proposed by the companies themselves), Wheeler's FCC went a little further with Charter -- not only banning the company from imposing usage caps and overage fees for seven years, but requiring that Charter continue adhering to FCC net neutrality rules -- even if those rules are killed (something Pai has repeatedly promised to do). But the FCC also mandated that Charter Communications expand its broadband footprint to two million additional locations -- one million of which needed to be in areas already served by cable competitors.

Former FCC boss Tom Wheeler had argued that this "overbuild" condition would specifically impose added competition on those regions, "bringing innovation and new choices for consumers, and demonstrate the viability of one broadband provider overbuilding another." But small and large cable company lobbyists had spent months lobbying to have all of the conditions killed, going so far as to threaten to freeze broadband investment if the conditions weren't eliminated (you know you're in a non-competitive market when you labor under the illusion that you get to choose when to compete).

Quickly rushing to the aid of these companies before they faced the dreaded specter of additional competition, Pai's office announced that the agency would be retroactively killing the overbuild condition. This was, Pai insisted in an FCC statement, yet another shining example of the FCC boss's relentless dedication to helping "the public interest":

"My top priority is making sure that any American who wants high-speed Internet access is able to get it. Today, we take another step toward achieving that goal.

Last year, Charter Communications agreed to build broadband out to two million new customers as part of its merger with Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. Unfortunately, the FCC appended an “overbuild” condition to the order, requiring that half of those new locations be already served by another provider. Since these one million overbuilt deployments would be credited against the total, it would substantially reduce buildout to unserved areas. This is like telling two people you will buy them dinner, ordering two entrées, and then sending both to just one of your companions.

This condition was not and is not in the public interest, and it runs directly against the goal of promoting greater Internet access for all Americans.

So one, to believe Pai you'd have to ignore not only his entire voting record, but the fact that he just began dismantling an FCC program specifically designed to help bring broadband to the poor.

That said, people should also understand that large ISPs (and those that kneel in fealty to them) like to keep the focus on an ambiguous dedication to "closing the digital divide" because it ignores the real problem: high prices and limited competition. According to NTIA data, there are about 26 million households left in the U.S. that aren't connected to the internet. If you look closely at the breakdown of why these homes aren't connected, the top three reasons either involve these users not giving a damn about being connected, or not being able to afford connectivity due to cost:

Because these companies obviously don't want people focused on the lack of competition, you've perhaps noticed that Pai (and the large ISPs that adore him) avoid ever acknowledging that lack of competition -- and the resulting high prices -- are a problem. In fact, it's often comedic to watch how desperately many of these folks (including the lion's share of hired ISP policy mouthpieces and think tankers) try and avoid the subject. Instead, apparently, we get odd metaphors about dinner entrees that don't really make much coherent sense in context.

Of course, then, the overbuild condition was axed because it did the unspeakable: actually forced a handful of companies to compete. Granted this overall lack of competition is what lets these companies impose arbitrary and unnecessary usage caps and overage fees -- which are little more than glorified rate hikes. And cable lobbying groups like the NCTA have been lobbying the FCC to get rid of the conditions banning Charter caps as well (pdf).

All told, much like the man that appointed him, FCC boss Ajit Pai likes to try and obfuscate his almost mindless dedication to protecting large legacy companies with an utterly phoney dedication to the downtrodden. The Charter merger, approved under the Obama administration, was admittedly a bad deal that has already resulted in higher prices and even worse customer service for impacted customers. But eliminating these conditions only serves to make an already bad deal, even worse. And the pretense that it's being done out of a love of America's downtrodden only adds insult to injury.

Filed Under: ajit pai, competition, fcc, merger conditions, overbuild
Companies: bright house networks, charter, time warner cable

FCC, FTC Bosses Pen Misleading Editorial Falsely Claiming The Best Way To Protect Your Privacy Moving Forward... Is To Gut Net Neutrality

from the you're-not-helping dept

As they've long made clear, Trump, FCC boss Ajit Pai, and other net neutrality opponents have every intention of killing net neutrality rules. Of course, given the huge, bipartisan consumer popularity of net neutrality, these folks can't just come out and say they're doing that, lest they incur the wrath of internet users and activists. As such, they've begun laying the groundwork for a misleading argument that attempts to make gutting oversight of the uncompetitive broadband industry -- and killing net neutrality -- sound almost pleasant.

The latest example of this came via an op-ed this week in the Washington Post, jointly written by FCC boss Ajit Pai and FTC boss Maureen Ohlhausen, entitled "No, Republicans didn't just strip away your Internet privacy rights." Of course they did, and there's not any real debate that this is what happened, but this being the post-truth era -- countless individuals labor under the illusion that facts are somehow negotiable. Amusingly, the editorial can't even make it a full sentence without being misleading (read: lying):

"April Fools’ Day came early last week, as professional lobbyists lit a wildfire of misinformation about Congress’s action — signed into law Monday by President Trump — to nullify the Federal Communications Commission’s broadband privacy rules. So as the nation’s chief communications regulator and the nation’s chief privacy enforcer, we want to let the American people know what’s really going on and how we will ensure that consumers’ online privacy is protected."

Of course, 90% of the lobbying at play on this subject came via telecom industry giants like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, who are spending millions of dollars to reduce oversight of one of the least competitive business segments in American industry. Even Google, one-time consumer-advocate, had lobbied in opposition to the rules (pdf). The mortal sin the rules committed was that they required that consumers opt in (the dirtiest word imaginable in advertising) to having their personal financial and browsing data collected and sold.

It's also worth reminding folks here that the lion's share of consumers, be they Democrat, Republican or Independent, supported the privacy protections and wanted Trump to veto what was seen, quite correctly and uniformly, as an embarrassing example of pay-to-play politics:

So yes, to begin, the only "misinformation" here is originating with Pai and Ohlhausen. The duo proceed to parrot large telecom companies in claiming that people are overreacting because ISPs don't really collect much data about them:

"Let’s set the record straight: First, despite hyperventilating headlines, Internet service providers have never planned to sell your individual browsing history to third parties. That’s simply not how online advertising works. And doing so would violate ISPs’ privacy promises.

Note the continued use of the phrase "individual" by ISPs and the policymakers kneeling in fealty to them. Yes, ISPs don't sell your "individual" browsing histories (yet), but they do collect wholesale clickstream data, DNS records, location data, redirected search entries and countless other metrics -- using a vast array of sophisticated deep packet inspection and other network gear. Some of this data is "anonymized" and sold and some isn't, but to suggest that ISP "privacy promises" (privacy policies written entirely to protect the ISP from legal liability) are some kind of magic protection for consumers is hysterically and patently false.

From there, the pair proceed to parrot the other key talking point ISPs have been pushing over the last year. Namely, that eliminating the FCC privacy rules isn't a big deal because the FTC will rush in to fill the oversight vacuum and protect consumer privacy:

"Second, Congress’s decision last week didn’t remove existing privacy protections; it simply cleared the way for us to work together to reinstate a rational and effective system for protecting consumer privacy. Both of us warned two years ago that the FCC’s party-line vote to strip the Federal Trade Commission of its jurisdiction over Internet broadband providers was a mistake that would weaken Americans’ online privacy."

That's again, patently false. The FCC stepped in only because ISPs were engaged in all manner of bad behavior and the FTC lacked the authority, motivation, or resources to do anything about it. This ranged from ISPs charging users hundreds of additional dollars a year to opt out of data collection, to covertly modifying user wireless packets to track users around the internet without telling anybody. The FCC's rules were specifically tailored to protect consumers from broadband providers that enjoy limited competition, and thereby limited repercussions for bad policy behaviors.

Those that want an open and healthy internet need to understand that this idea that the FTC provides effective oversight of broadband providers is patently false. ISPs aren't lobbying to shift broadband regulatory authority back from the FCC to the FTC because it's fun. They're spending millions of dollars in lobbying to ensure they see less regulatory oversight than ever before. That this return to FTC authority is some kind of panacea is a canard most recently debunked by former FCC boss Tom Wheeler in an interview with Susan Crawford:

"In the Trump administration, people are talking about stripping regulatory power from the FCC, and essentially taking the agency apart (including moving jurisdiction over internet access to the Federal Trade Commission [FTC]). “Modernizing” the FCC is the lingo being used. What’s your thought about that?

It’s a fraud. The FTC doesn’t have rule-making authority. They’ve got enforcement authority and their enforcement authority is whether or not something is unfair or deceptive. And the FTC has to worry about everything from computer chips to bleach labeling. Of course, carriers want [telecom issues] to get lost in that morass. This was the strategy all along.

So it doesn’t surprise me that the Trump transition team — who were with the American Enterprise Institute and basically longtime supporters of this concept — comes in and says, “Oh, we oughta do away with this.” It makes no sense to get rid of an expert agency and to throw these issues to an agency with no rule-making power that has to compete with everything else that’s going on in the economy, and can only deal with unfair or deceptive practices.

Make no mistake: the goal is, again, less oversight of one of the least competitive, and most anti-competitive companies in America. Pai and Ohlhausen, as revolving door regulators are wont to do, go to comic lengths to try and pretend the broadband industry isn't a competitive mess:

"Others argue that ISPs should be treated differently because consumers face a unique lack of choice and competition in the broadband marketplace. But that claim doesn’t hold up to scrutiny either. For example, according to one industry analysis, Google dominates desktop search with an estimated 81 percent market share (and 96 percent of the mobile search market), whereas Verizon, the largest mobile broadband provider, holds only an estimated 35 percent of its market."

That's some lovely, cherry picked bullshit.

Most consumers lack the choice of more than one fixed-line broadband provider, and the looming wave of mergers and acquisitions (supported by both Pai and Ohlhausen) are likely to reduce competition even further. Again, you can choose to not use Gmail, Google search or Facebook. Most people have only one or two broadband providers to choose from, both of which are happily engaged in non-price competition with little to no incentive to behave. This lack of competition -- and the government's unwillingness to address this for fear of stifling AT&T, Comcast, Charter and Verizon campaign contributions -- is what triggered the entire net neutrality and privacy fracas to begin with.

Of course, there's something else the pair intentionally and comically avoid talking about in their treatise. And that's the fact that to gut FCC authority over broadband and shovel it back to an already-overburdened FTC, regulators need to roll back the Title II reclassification of ISPs as common carriers -- and by proxy the nation's net neutrality rules. Pai and Ohlhausen don't even utter the phrase "net neutrality" in their missive, knowing all-too-well that they'd be laughed out of town if they didn't try to hide their real objective under a parade of half-truths and prattle.

But make no mistake, this pretense that we need to shift broadband regulatory oversight back to the FTC because it provides a more "consistent regulatory environment" is a transparently self-serving, telecom industry-concocted canard -- and the opening salvo in what will be the death of net neutrality protections if we don't start paying closer attention.

Filed Under: ajit pai, broadband, competition, fcc, ftc, maureen ohlhausen, net neutrality, privacy