9th Circuit Overturns FCC's Cable Modem Decision

Decaffeinated Jedi writes "According to this Washington Post article, a federal appeals court in California has overturned a Federal Communications Commission decision that many smaller companies claim has kept them locked out of the high-speed cable Internet business. As Chris Murry of Consumers Union (publisher of Consumer Reports) notes, 'Many consumers hate their cable companies' privacy policies and their failure to deal with spam effectively. Giving consumers a choice of Internet service providers would open the door to more competition, and let people choose services with better privacy and less spam.' As noted in News.com coverage of this decision, however, FCC chairman Michael Powell plans to appeal the ruling." Reader rednaxela provides some more insight (and a link to the ruling itself), below.

rednaxela writes "The 9th Circuit today issued a decision overturning the FCC's classification of cable modem service as an 'information service,' stating instead that cable modem service consists of both an 'information service' *and* a 'telecommunications service.' Telecommunications services are classified under Title II of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and are subject to all kinds of regulation. Information Services are classified under Title I, and are largely free from regulation. If upheld, this decision will likely require cable modem providers to open their networks to competing ISPs. Further, this is likely to derail, or at least complicate, the FCC's plans to classify DSL service (which is provided primarily over incumbent telco facilities) as a unified 'information service." Bottom line - the 9th Circuit's decision may well have preserved open access for competing ISPs on all forms of wireline networks.' Here is the 9th Circuit's ruling (PDF).

Comments

I'm in Canada

[B3ryllium]

I hate that Shaw is such a monopoly in my particular region. In cities, they compete with Telus - but frankly, Telus is the greater of the two evils. That's another topic for another day, however.

Out here in Ruralland Canada, Shaw Cable is the only choice for highspeed, and they charge an arm and a leg AND make you sign over your firstborn. It's very annoying. I'd like to see them put in charge of the infrastructure alone, and have mom & pop ISPs handle the cable modems, and the end-user support. They should only have to pay a small per-client licensing fee, and be given free reign to charge what they'd like above that for internet access. They should also have the option of regulating speeds at their own discretion, for various bundle offerings.

Does anyone think this is a good way to break up monopoly power, or is it just silly?

Re:Competition=good thing.

[homer_ca]

Yes, competition is good, but does that also mean more taxes for cable modem service if it's classified as a telecommunications service?

Re:9th Circuit

[Quino]

They covered this in NPR; it's a myth that the 9th circuit gets a higher % overturned. It happens to be one of the busiest circuits (I think *the* busiest), so more cases go through and more cases later get overturned. But their % of rulings later overturned is no higher than other courts.

Question?

[TnkMkr]

It was my understanding that the phone companies had to open their lines up because their infrastructure was in part funded by the government. And a lot of the initial capitol to build a reliable phone system was provided by the taxpayers.

I thought the cable companies totally funded the construction (or purchase of pre-existing) system, and had no government assistance financially or otherwise? If this is the case is it fair to force a private company to allow competitors to use the fruits of their labor?

I picture a similar case being United Parcel Services being forced to share it's truck fleet with the competition, just because no one else can afford to buy their own trucks.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

Re:Question

[softweyr]

There is a lot more at stake than just the wire. The phone companies and in many cases the cable companies were given easements by local governments to run wire under streets, were often given land to place exchange offices on, etc., because they provide a "public good." These days, such rights-of-way can be sold for money, but the telcos and cable companies get a free ride off your tax dollars because they are supposedly providing a public service.

The irony in this is Qwest, generally one of the lousier Baby Bells, has a great DSL service offering. They'll partner with just about any ISPs that will pony up the bucks to drop in a local T-1 or greater connection to the QWest network, and offer dozens to hundreds of ISPs at reasonable rates (starting at roughly $22/month for 256K symmetrical, exclusive of ISP fees).

The cable companies have long complained what a burden it will be to provision cable modems with multiple ISPs, but it's just not true. All they have to be able to do is associate a subscriber, via the MAC address in their cable modem, with a DOCSIS config file that tells them which ISP to communicate with.

The telcos do have a bit of a head start, in that they have a logical and well-defined way to get the data off their network and onto the ISP: they require the ISP to buy telco services, in the form of T-1 or greater lines, to shovel the data across. I'm pretty certain the cable companies will be able to solve this problem in a cable company kind of way, too, if they just put their minds (well, engineers) to it. So let's have it, CableLabs, give us a cable standard for an ISP interconnect over cable.

This decision is more akin to the federal government requiring airlines to fly you to your destination regardless of which rental car company and hotel you will be using, rather than allowing them to refuse to fly you unless you use their rental cars, their hotels, etc. You wanna carry bits around on wire, fine. You wanna provide internet end-point services, that's fine too. Just don't tie the two businesses together.