AT&T Has To Walk Back Its Empty Bluff About Freezing Fiber Deployment Because Of Title II

from the please-whatever-you-do-don't-check-our-math dept

When the President last month voiced his surprising and clear support for reclassifying ISPs under Title II, AT&T engaged in some very AT&T-esque pouting, proclaiming that the company would be freezing expansion of its next-generation "Gigapower" fiber deployments:

"We can't go out and invest that kind of money deploying fiber to 100 cities not knowing under what rules those investments will be governed...We think it is prudent to just pause and make sure we have line of sight and understanding as to what those rules would look like," added the CEO."

Except, as I noted at the time, AT&T's deployment promises were a bluff to begin with (what I like to call fiber to the press release). AT&T's been bumping speeds for a few high-end developments in cities around the country where fiber was already in the ground, then pretending that the deployments are much larger than they actually are. The goal is to save face in the age of Google Fiber, and give the mostly-bogus impression that AT&T's seriously competing. In reality, AT&T had again cut its fixed-line CAPEX by about $3 billion -- three days before the President's announcement -- and it's backing away from millions of DSL users it doesn't want to upgrade.

This is nothing new to AT&T. The company has a very long and proud history of using broadband deployment as a carrot on a stick to get what it wants from regulators (whether that's buying BellSouth, buying T-Mobile, buying DirecTV, or pushing for deregulation). AT&T's numbers are frequently distorted or outright fabricated, and regulators historically don't question them. This time, AT&T's bluff didn't work so well -- because somebody in government decided to actually pay attention.

Jamillia Ferris, a former Justice Department antitrust lawyer aiding the FCC in reviewing AT&T's DirecTV acquisition plans sent a letter to the FCC asking AT&T to detail the company's fiber deployments. In a response (pdf) letter to the FCC, AT&T insists that the FCC had the company all wrong. You see, AT&T claims, the company wasn't threatening to freeze ongoing fiber deployment, it was threatening to freeze fiber deployment beyond existing promises (though Stephenson's statement very clearly doesn't say that):

"The premise of the Commission’s November 14 Letter is incorrect. AT&T is not limiting our FTTP deployment to 2 million homes. To the contrary, AT&T still plans to complete the major initiative we announced in April to expand our ultra-fast GigaPower fiber network in 25 major metropolitan areas nationwide, including 21 new major metropolitan areas."

The majority of the document is of course redacted, and you'd be hard pressed to get the government to conduct a proper audit of either AT&T's real broadband deployment numbers or the billions in subsidies received over the years to help fund them. While it's amusing to see regulators call AT&T's bluff for once, the telco will surely return to using the same old phantom-broadband-carrot-on-a-stick routine a few months down the road.

Filed Under: buildout, fcc, gigapower, net neutrality, randall stephenson, title ii
Companies: at&t

Mark Cuban Again Illustrates He Has No Idea What Net Neutrality Is Or Why It's Important

from the words-are-but-wind dept

To be very clear, there are some subjects Mark Cuban has a very good understanding of, ranging from his support of patent reform and his helpful goal of improving antiquated film release windows to highlighting the SEC's disdain for the 14th and 4th Amendments during his fight over insider trading allegations. That said, for some reason when the Dallas Mavericks owner begins talking about telecom, Internet video and net neutrality, a string of cryptic gibberish begins to spill forth from his head that's entirely detached from the cogent, mortal plane.

As the boss of HDNet (now AXS TV), Cuban spent years crying and wailing about the rise of Internet video. He frequently attacked companies offering content for free, insisted that Hulu viewers "leech off the money we pay to enjoy tv," waged a bizarre, unsuccessful one man war against "illegal" YouTube, and told anybody who would listen that Internet video was destined to failure. That mindset fueled his position on net neutrality, one that largely mirrors that of the cable and broadcast industry at large (read: everything is fine and we need no rules). Cuban even at one time urged ISPs to go ahead and block P2P entirely (legitimate uses be damned).

Spurred by the recent Title II debate, Cuban has emerged once again to share his neutrality insights on Twitter, where he recently floated the increasingly stale idea that supporting a neutral Internet is a government assault on on the Utopian miracle that is the telecom free market:

3. The "People" want more gov to protect them so they cant be stopped from getting movies/tv shows OTT.That is straight out of Ayn Rand

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) November 13, 2014

Cuban also offered up a Q&A session with the Washington Post because, Post writer Nancy Scola informs us, "there's nothing that Cuban dislikes more than untested conventional wisdom" (aka the need for net neutrality rules). Most of us by now know the U.S. broadband market isn't free or functional -- it's a broken duopoly, slathered in a layer of regulatory capture, preying on a captive audience incapable of voting with their wallets. Cuban's refusal to acknowledge this reality is on stark display throughout the Q&A:

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The Verizon decision [the January, 2014, court order that struck down the Federal Communication Commission's 2010 passage of net neutrality rules] has created an opportunity for the FCC to introduce more rule-making. They shouldn't. Things have worked well. There is no better platform in the world to start a new business than the Internet in the United States."

Except innovation is being threatened precisely because the U.S. broadband market is indisputably broken. Companies like Verizon and AT&T have abused the fact they dominate 85% of the wireless retail market for years, whether it's the blocking of handset GPS radio functionality to push their own GPS apps, the blocking of Google Wallet to help adoption of their own mobile payment platforms, or the blocking of Facetime to push users toward metered data plans. On the fixed-line side you've got residential ISPs who've also been abusing the lack of competition to impose entirely unnecessary usage caps to hinder Internet video use and protect TV revenues.

As we've noted for many years now, these very real, very clear anti-competitive behaviors are a symptom of the broader disease that is a lack of competition. While there's certainly a conversation to be had about the perils of government over-reach if rules aren't done correctly, if you're still somehow arguing that the U.S. broadband industry is a healthy, functioning free market, you're simply not credible on the subjects of net neutrality or telecom.

We've noted how Title II with forbearance is the best tool we have in light of this lack of competition to keep the Internet healthy and consumers protected. To defend their government-pampered fiefdoms from any attempt to change the status quo, incumbent ISPs have falsely claimed that Title II "bans fast lanes" or "stifles investment," both of which are demonstrably not true. Yet Cuban buys this argument without question:

"I want certain medical apps that need the Internet to be able to get the bandwidth they need. There will be apps that doctors will carry on 5G networks that allow them to get live video from accident scenes and provide guidance. There will be machine vision apps that usage huge amounts of bandwidth. I want them to have fast lanes."

That protecting net neutrality will break grandma's pacemaker is a favorite talking point of the telecom industry, even though none of the proposed rules would hinder things like prioritized machine to machine connectivity, and the FCC's simply never going to ban intelligent network management. You'll recall that one of Verizon's greasier arguments of late has been that net neutrality rules will harm the deaf. Amusingly the majority of deaf and disabled groups not only don't agree (apparently AT&T hasn't gotten around to paying them yet), the majority of deaf and disabled groups support Title II. For someone who claims to hate "conventional wisdom" and professes loving questioning things so much, Cuban seems quick to buy Verizon's line of nonsense.

In one of the more amusing exchanges, Cuban proceeds to insist that because none of the entrepreneurs he speaks to bring up net neutrality in meetings, net neutrality as a concept must not be very important to the broader Internet:

"I have yet to talk to a single entrepreneur, or investment I have, or potential investment I have, or [seen an] acquisition or sale of a company on the Internet where the issue of net neutrality has come up. No one starting a business even considers net neutrality in their business, except for those that are religious about it and ISPs and networks that have to deal with any uncertainty it introduces."

This couldn't possibly be explained by the fact that entrepreneurs or potential deal partners sitting in Mark Cuban's office have done their research, know Cuban loathes net neutrality, and therefore don't mention it because they want his money right?

The Mavs owner then proceeds to brush aside concerns over programs like AT&T's Sponsored Data, which involves companies paying AT&T for the privilege of bypassing arbitrary user caps. That, as VC Fred Wilson eloquently pointed out, sets a dangerous precedent in that it lets deeper-pocketed companies buy an advantage over the same smaller entrepreneurs Cuban professes to love. T-Mobile's Music Freedom plan sets a similarly bad precedent for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Yet like so many people who don't actually understand net neutrality (including the FCC), Cuban thinks these kinds of arbitrarily-erected monetization efforts are cute and creative business models:

"It's a business decision that has as a much chance to fail as work. If you don't like the offering from T-Mobile you may go somewhere else. Or if you like the offering, you may switch to T-Mobile. If T-Mobile came to me and asked me if I wanted to subsidize their consumers getting [Dallas] Mavs games streamed live over their phones or to mobile home routers, without impacting their data caps, I would love it, if the price was right, and would do it in a heartbeat."

Of course Cuban has already made his fortune. Were we to take 1995 Mark Cuban (who was busy building Broadcast.com) and transplant his business into the modern era under AT&T, Verizon and Comcast -- you can be damn sure he'd be taking a very different approach to these issues. Cuban has spent a decade making it abundantly clear he doesn't understand net neutrality, the telecom market or the potential pitfalls of these new cap exempt business models. Perhaps we should put Mark Cuban, Donald Trump and all the rest of the billionaires with plenty to say but little actual understanding in charge of the telecom industry. At least we'd get some entertainment value out of the equation while the Internet burns.

Filed Under: broadband, fast lanes, mark cuban, net neutrality, open internet, regulations

T-Mobile Still Doesn't Understand (Or Simply Doesn't Care) That Their 'Music Freedom' Plan Tramples Net Neutrality

from the paved-with-good-intentions dept

Back in June we noted how T-Mobile had unveiled a new "Music Freedom" program that exempts the biggest music streaming companies from T-Mobile's usage caps. When introduced at the time, T-Mobile pitched the idea as a huge win for consumers, as you could listen to say -- Spotify -- without worrying about eroding your usage allotments. T-Mobile also insisted that if your favorite service isn't included, you can just Tweet T-Mobile to have it whitelisted for cap exemption. Sounds like a great deal for everybody, right?

Well, no. Imagine you're one of the thousands of smaller streaming services or non-profits arbitrarily deemed too small to get on the cap-exemption list. You're suddenly facing a steeper competitive slope than ever before, given that larger companies' services are excluded from the cap and yours aren't. Whereas T-Mobile should be delivering all bits equally, by injecting themselves into the middle, they've tilted the playing field against small operations and non-profits. Meanwhile, begging the company via Twitter for inclusion is far from a transparent process. Furthermore, in doing this, T-Mobile is quite clearly admitting that the data caps it puts on are artificially low, harming consumers by charging them extra if they happen to use a higher bandwidth service that hasn't buddy'd up with the company.

At the time it was announced, ultra-hip T-Mobile CEO John Legere was "genuinely surprised" by the criticism from neutrality advocates, arguing that because nobody was paying T-Mobile to bypass the caps -- it couldn't possibly be a neutrality violation. Judging from this recent Reddit conversation, many consumers are confused as well, and are quite eager to root against their best self interest. The FCC has also made it clear they think this is simply "creative pricing," and won't be prohibited by the agency's new neutrality rules.

But because consumers, hipsteresque CEOs and regulators don't understand what's happening doesn't make it less true: T-Mobile's idea (and AT&T's similarly-minded sponsored data effort) sets horrible precedents by letting carriers artificially inject themselves into a content and service ecosystem that is healthier with them out of the way. Accept the idea that carriers can use caps in such a discriminatory fashion, and you're opening the door to a world of aggressive and anti-competitive behavior.

This week T-Mobile announced they've added a few more small services like Google Play Music and SoundCloud, bringing the total list of cap-exempt services to 27 (how many streaming music, audio services, radio stations and podcast broadcasts exist in the world again?). Meanwhile, Legere seems no more enlightened as to why setting arbitrary usage limits then exempting only some companies isn't really a good idea, patting himself on the back for being so pro consumer:

"Music Freedom is pro-consumer, pro-music and pure Un-carrier," said John Legere, president and CEO of T-Mobile. “And today we’re taking another huge step toward our ultimate goal of including every streaming music service in the program. Anyone can play. No one pays. And everyone wins."

Except again, not everybody wins. Does a small independent streaming radio station too little to meet T-Mobile's invisible interest threshold for whitelisted services "win" if their bits are counted against the cap, but the bytes of Pandora aren't? Net neutrality is about carriers getting out of the way, not erecting annoying new arbitrary systems of control and monetization. T-Mobile has made some great, pro-consumer moves of late, but this isn't one of them. The company either doesn't understand that "Music Freedom" tramples all over net neutrality, or they understand this all too well and simply hope consumers are too stupid to notice.

Filed Under: data caps, john legere, music freedom, music streaming, net neutrality, open internet, streaming
Companies: t-mobile

CenturyLink: We Lobby For Protectionist State Laws Because You Didn't Want Faster Fiber Anyway

from the these-are-not-the-droids-you're-looking-for dept

As we've noted, the very first place to start if we're seriously interested in fixing U.S. broadband competition problems is the protectionist laws ISPs paid to have passed in nearly two-dozen states. These laws hinder or outright ban towns and cities across the country from not only building their own broadband networks in areas ISPs refuse to serve, but they also in many cases prohibit towns and cities from cooperating with smaller private companies. These laws were passed like wild fire over a fifteen-year span, but have seen renewed attention lately as Google Fiber fuels a lust for more competition and faster, cheaper networks.

One of the biggest historical supporters of these laws is CenturyLink (formerly CenturyTel, and before that, Qwest). From suing to prevent Utah towns and cities from using Qwest poles in 2005, to teaming with Time Warner Cable to pass awful laws in the Carolinas, CenturyLink has been a starring player in making sure towns and cities can't improve their own broadband fortunes -- even in cases where companies like CenturyLink refuse to.

At the receiving end of this behavior are towns like Wilson, North Carolina, and Chattanooga, Tennessee -- both of which have tried to build better broadband networks but ran face first into the handy work of companies like Comcast, AT&T, CenturyLink and Time Warner Cable. Both towns recently petitioned the FCC (pdf), asking the agency to preempt portions of Tennessee and North Carolina state statutes that restrict their ability to provide or expand broadband services. Instead of standing up for local rights or against letting lumbering duopolies write telecom law, politicians like Martha Blackburn sided with the telecom companies, pushing laws trying to tie the FCC's hands on the matter (you know, for the rights of the little people).

While municipal broadband opponents often try to vilify these efforts as "government run amok," the reality is that these towns and cities wouldn't be trying to enter the broadband business if we had meaningful competition driving better pricing and services. In a recent New York Times story exploring these awful laws, CenturyLink feebly attempts to defend itself to the Times, insisting that it's not building faster next-generation fiber networks -- because nobody actually wants them:

"We build our network to meet customer expectations,” said Bill Hanchey, a CenturyLink regional vice president who oversees government affairs. But customers are not clamoring for the speed provided by fiber, he said. "It does us no good to go out and build networks that customers don’t need or aren't requesting."

The Times doesn't bother to challenge this assertion, and CenturyLink doesn't explain why cities and towns are trying to build better broadband if they don't want faster, better service. That customers don't want faster fiber is probably of particular note to the tens of millions of CenturyLink customers whose aging, expensive DSL lines (capped at 150 GB of usage each month, no less) struggle to reach speeds of 3-6 Mbps downstream.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, fiber, municipal broadband
Companies: centurylink

Misleading Rasmussen Poll Helps Prop Up Bogus Net Neutrality Partisan Divide

from the damn-lies-and-statistics dept

As we noted last week, the idea that net neutrality is a strictly partisan issue is a dated one, with several new studies indicating that support for net neutrality (and support for meaningful net neutrality rules) is increasingly common among members of all parties. As we've also noted several times, most people, when you sit them down and talk to them, understand that letting lumbering telecom duopolists write the laws, corner the market, and erect obnoxious new and arbitrary tolls, simply isn't a very bright idea or conducive to healthy technology markets.

While a number of polls and surveys were busy deconstructing the myth of the partisan neutrality feud last week, Rasmussen Reports was busy trying to perpetuate it. The firm recently issued a new poll that breathlessly proclaimed that 61% of the public opposed net neutrality rules, while also insisting that people generally really like their cable and broadband providers:

"Most Americans have opposed increased government regulation of the Internet since December 2010 when some members of the FCC began pushing “net neutrality” efforts to stop some companies from offering higher downloading speeds to preferred customers. Seventy-six percent (76%) of Americans who regularly go online rate the quality of their Internet service as good or excellent. Only five percent (5%) consider their service poor. Americans remain suspicious of the motives of those who want government regulation of the Internet. Sixty-eight percent (68%) are concerned that if the FCC does gain regulatory control over the Internet, it will lead to government efforts to control online content or promote a political agenda, with 44% who are Very Concerned."

Of course if you actually bother to investigate the questions asked of survey participants, you'll notice this amusing little ditty:

"Should the Internet remain "open" without regulation and censorship or should the Federal Communications Commission regulate the Internet like it does radio and television?"

Note that in this case the question tells the poll taker the Internet is currently "open" and that regulation will automatically change this. Amusingly, the phrase "and censorship" is just kind of thrown in there casually, as if nobody reading the poll questions could possibly ferret out that Rasmussen is being misleading. It's effectively asking survey recipients: "Do you like government meddling -- that involves punching you squarely in the face?"

The Rasmussen poll wording also goes on to more subtly rattle ye olde "all regulation is automatically evil" saber, strongly implying that real competition would be immeasurably better than consumer protections. That's partially true -- we've obviously argued more than a few times that net neutrality violations are just the symptom of the lack of competition disease. That said, Rasmussen intentionally ignores (or doesn't actually understand) that Title II with forbearance is the best option available in the face of an immensely powerful broadband duopoly (or monopoly) that's simply not getting fixed anytime soon.

Obviously this isn't the first time Rasmussen has brought loaded questions to play. The firm's reputation as a reliable pollster took a mammoth hit back in 2010 for repeatedly being significantly off on projections, and having what Nate Silver and Five-Thirty-Eight at the time complained was "cavalier attitude toward polling convention," something Silver stated would "need to be refined" if the pollster was to ever be taken seriously again. Judging from their net neutrality poll, those necessary improvements may not be coming anytime soon.

That said, do you support net neutrality...when it involves getting kicked in the groin?

Filed Under: democrats, net neutrality, partisan, polls, republicans
Companies: rasmussen

Fixing The Broadband Market And Protecting Net Neutrality By Prying Open Incumbent Networks To Meaningful Competition

from the your-promised-broadband-Utopia-never-arrived dept

While Title II is the best net neutrality option available in the face of a lumbering broadband duopoly, it still doesn't fix the fact that the vast majority of customers only have the choice of one or two broadband options. It's this lack of competition that not only results in net neutrality violations (as customers can't vote down stupid ISP behavior with their wallet), but the higher prices and abysmal customer service so many of us have come to know and love. Stripping away protectionist state laws can help a little, as can the slow rise of services like Google Fiber. But even these efforts can only go so far in blowing up a broadband duopoly, pampered through regulatory capture and built up over a generation of campaign contributions.

One solution is the return to the country's barely-tried implementation of unbundling and network open access, or requiring that the nation's subsidy-slathered monopolists open their networks to allow other competitors to come in and compete. There are many variations of this concept, and it's something Google Fiber promised in its markets before backing away from it (much like their vocal support of net neutrality). Obviously being forced to compete is an immensely unpopular concept for the nation's incumbent ISPs. Given that those companies dictate and often literally write the nation's telecom laws, these requirements were eliminated in a number of policies moves starting in 2001 and culminating in the FCC's Triennial Review Remand Order of 2004 (pdf).

This was amazingly presented at the time as a way to improve competition and spur investment, but primarily resulted in a bloodbath as dozens of consumer-friendly, smaller independent ISPs and CLECs were killed off, perpetuating and further cementing the noncompetitive duopoly we have today.

One of the few small ISPs to manage to run that gauntlet and survive it was California's Sonic.Net, which has since proceeded to not only build a sizable regional network of its own in California, but to manage to treat consumers well while doing it (Sonic has been praised by the EFF repeatedly for consumer-friendly data disclosure policies). In a blog post last week, Sonic.net CEO Dane Jasper notes that neutrality issues are just a symptom of the lack of competition, and to fix these we're going to need to start thinking differently:

"Lets call it like it is: in most of America, we’ve got a broadband duopoly at best. And it’s simple economic theory and best-practice capitalism that in an unregulated near-monopoly, you will see manifestations of policies, practices and behaviors that are not always customer friendly. If we accept that high speed Internet access is essential for modern life, the fact that we need a set of controls that assure that an entrenched operator won’t use their captive audience in an unreasonable way shouldn’t come as a surprise.

While neutrality is the topic of the day, the real fix is to reinvigorate competitive Internet access in America. Competitive access in Europe supported by legislation similar to The 1996 Act has resulted in lower costs for consumers and far more choices in Europe. What Michael Powell decided to do hasn’t worked out as well for Americans. Today’s FCC should return to the roots of the Telecom Act, and reinforce the unbundling requirements, assuring that they are again technology neutral. This will create an investment ladder to facilities for competitive carriers, opening access to build out and serve areas that are beyond our reach today."

This isn't just a pipe dream. While we pretended to try open access as a concept, we never tried very hard. For the few years it was attempted, incumbent ISPs repeatedly made cooperation impossible for a smaller carriers, intentionally sabotaging installs, delaying support calls, and generally doing their very best to make sure that the concept didn't work. Carriers paid regulators to nap on these issues before then FCC boss Michael Powell (now the top lobbyist for the cable industry) ultimately decided to kill the idea for good. This is, opponents of the idea will insist, somehow proof positive that the concept of open access doesn't work.

Except real-world data has repeatedly shown the open access model results in more competition and lower prices. This Berkman Center study (pdf) commissioned by the FCC (which the agency promptly ignored) showed the positive benefits of an open access model in a significant number of countries, including France. The result? French consumers, awash in competition, pay among the lowest prices anywhere for telecom services. This Venture Beat report from last week conveniently illustrates how an American that was paying Comcast and AT&T $230 every month had his mind blown by the experience of real competition:

"Now we live in the city center of Toulouse, France, in an apartment where I’m a broadband customer of a company called Numericable. Here’s what I get for $63 per month: 100 Mbps download speed, 250 cable channels, a home telephone with unlimited international calling, and a mobile phone that includes unlimited minutes and 3GB of data usage each month. (The only tradeoff was losing my unlimited AT&T data plan; but I also never come close to using 3GB.)...Separately, I’m getting ready to sign my wife up for a $20-per month mobile plan with mobile provider Free that comes with unlimited calling and 3GB of data."

Despite the fact this model clearly works, it's never considered in policy discussions as a serious possibility. Why? Quite simply because the incumbent providers don't want it. Through the use of their various PR folk, astroturfers, think tankers, fauxcademics and assorted hired mouthpieces, they've successfully managed to utterly vilify the concept, painting it as the very worst sort of government meddling in (not actually) free markets. Instead, we've chosen to head down the path of letting the nation's duopolists dictate telecom policy, and the end result should at this point be painfully obvious to everyone. Well, except the industry lobbyists who still somehow insist we're all living in a competitive broadband Utopia.

Filed Under: dane jasper, line sharing, net neutrality, network open access, open networks, unbundling
Companies: sonic.net

Jesse Jackson Insists He's Lobbying For Weaker Net Neutrality Rules To Help Protect The Poor

from the with-friends-like-these dept

We've talked more than a few times about the telecom industry's favored tactic of paying minority groups to parrot bad telecom policies, even if said policies actually harm these groups' constituents. Whether it's AT&T paying the The Hispanic Institute to support AT&T's failed bid for T-Mobile (a deal that would have raised rates for wireless users) or Comcast paying The United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce to support their acquisition of Time Warner Cable (a deal that will likely only make bad customer service at both companies worse), combining these groups with the existing payroll of fauxcademics, consultants, think tankers and other sockpuppets helps create the illusion of broad support for anti-consumer policies.

It's a parlor trick that has seen endless implementation in the net neutrality debate. The latest example is the Minority Media and Telecom Council (pdf), which alongside a laundry list of diversity and minority groups (pdf) has been lobbying the FCC with net neutrality talking points that (surely coincidentally) mirror the broadband industry's. Namely, that weaker Section 706 rules are the best path forward (ignoring they do nothing and likely won't survive another legal challenge) and that tougher rules under Title II will kill network investment (which, as we've noted repeatedly, is also bunk).

At the front of this disingenuous diversity army appears to be Jesse Jackson, who, the Washington Post states, spent some time recently lobbying the FCC for weaker net neutrality protections. Why? Apparently Jackson believes that carrying the water for lumbering duopolies somehow will magically create jobs:

"Jackson "was unequivocal in voicing his opposition to Title II because of its effects on investment in broadband and because of the ultimate impact on minority communities and job creation," said Berin Szoka, another participant in the meeting with Wheeler who has also argued for Section 706."

Szoka is the same individual who has repeatedly tried to argue that killing off net neutrality will be a great thing for startups, so if anything, this latest FCC meeting must have at least had great entertainment value. As for the claim that Title II will kill investment (and therefore jobs), this has been debunked time and time and time again. When parts of Verizon's FiOS network were classified under Title II (mostly to net tax breaks for Verizon), you'll be pleased to learn that the sky didn't fall. Meanwhile, after a decade of deregulation companies like AT&T and Verizon have made it clear they're never going to upgrade many poor areas. In fact, they intend to back away from many of the communities they do serve.

Shockingly, neither Jackson nor any of the lobbying groups listed in "united" support seem aware of these realities in the slightest:

"Civil rights and diversity organizations are largely united in their support for Section 706, Jackson said in an interview Monday. He added that no matter which legal approach the FCC chooses, the agency's net neutrality rules should not end up marginalizing minorities and the poor. "We got a lot of poor folks who don't have broadband," said Jackson. "If you create something where, for the poor, the lane is slower and the cost is more, you can't survive."

Of course if you've been playing along at home you know that the entire concept of net neutrality revolves around protecting everyone (including the poor) from the nation's broadband duopoly, and the price hikes and assorted gatekeeper shenanigans they've been experimenting with for the better part of a decade. Yet somehow in Jackson's head, protecting the incumbent ISP's right to engage in anti-competitive pricing models will be a good thing for less affluent areas:

"Jackson raised substantive concerns Thursday about the ability of low-income Americans and minority communities to afford bandwidth-hogging Internet services, according to someone who attended the FCC meeting and had lunch with Jackson beforehand but who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was private. Internet plans that exempt some applications from consumers' monthly data caps are one way to make data more affordable, and the tactic has become a popular business strategy in developing countries. But the practice also cuts against the principle of "strong" net neutrality because exempting some services from the cap necessarily means giving them special treatment over others. "[Jackson] immediately glommed on to this," said the person. "There are some strands of net neutrality … that are in direct conflict with low-income Americans."

Plans that "exempt some applications from consumers monthly data caps" sounds a lot like AT&T's misguided "Sponsored Data" efforts, which involve companies paying AT&T a fee for their content to bypass the company's usage caps. It's an idea that's solely about creating a new revenue stream for AT&T, but has the potential to hurt small companies and non profits that may not be able to pay AT&T's troll toll (how exactly would that help the poor?). And while there are some international examples of cap-exempt services being experimented with in developing nations where infrastructure barely exists (see 0.facebook.com and Google Free Zone), we're talking about the United States.

And here in the United States, our friendly neighborhood duopoly giants are looking for any opportunity to jack up what are already some of the highest prices in the developing world. If Jackson and friends really want to help their constituents, these diversity and minority groups could focus on things like fighting state laws that ban communities from improving their own broadband. I'll go out on a limb and guess that these groups' obfuscated financial donors would prefer that doesn't happen. Instead, by supporting the status quo and ensuring we take the weakest path possible on net neutrality, Jackson and friends are fighting against the best interests of the very same people they claim to be supporting.

Filed Under: astroturfing, broadband, fcc, jesse jackson, jobs, lobbying, net neutrality