FCC Warned Not To Take Actions a Republican-Led FCC Would Dislike

tlhIngan writes Municipal broadband is in the news again — this time Chief of Staff Matthew Berry, speaking at the National Conference of State Legislatures, has endorsed states' right to ban municipal broadband networks and warned the (Democrat-led) FCC to not do anything that a future Republican led FCC would dislike. The argument is that municipal broadband discourages private investment in broadband communications, that taxpayer-funded projects are barriers to future infrastructure investment.

Comments

Correction:

[Type44Q]

this time Chief of Staff Matthew Berry, speaking at the National Conference of State Legislatures, has endorsed states' right to ban municipal broadband networks

He's endorsed the right of the people in each state to get bent over by massively-corrupt telcos with their monopolistic behaviors - by reinforcing their monopolies - all in the name of a free market (despite the fact that it's anything but).

FTFY.

Re: Correction:

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you get to vote in or out the Comcast ceo like you get to do with the city mayor ?

Re:Correction:

[Chas]

In other words, he's being a Republican.

No you jackass. He's being a politician.

Republican, Democrat, WHATEVER, they're all saying the same thing to you (whatever they think will make you vote for them) now, and doing whatever the fuck they can to maximize benefit to their personal pocket book later.

If you think this is somehow mitigated by party affiliation, you REALLY need to stop abusing your prescriptions and hike your way out of fantasy land.

Re:Correction:

[Trailer Trash]

this time Chief of Staff Matthew Berry, speaking at the National Conference of State Legislatures, has endorsed states' right to ban municipal broadband networks

He's endorsed the right of the people in each state to get bent over by massively-corrupt telcos with their monopolistic behaviors - by reinforcing their monopolies - all in the name of a free market (despite the fact that it's anything but).

FTFY.

Those telcos are forced to provide service to everybody at the same price, which means they make a profit on tightly packed businesses in the city and that offsets their losses on the more widespread customers out of town. If the city comes in and serves only the tightly packed businesses, they can easily offer the service at a lower price and still make money or break even, and the telco ends up losing their profitable customers and therefore their ability to offset their losses elsewhere.

I'm not against "municipal broadband", but they need to be held to the exact same standard as all other carriers in the same area. That might well mean offering service to out of town customers, also.

I didn't understand the fuss until last time this came up and someone in the industry explained it quite clearly in a +5 post.

Re:Correction:

[lgw]

Both parties have, as their first priority, protecting the financial interests of their largest (usually corporate) donors. Both parties lie about this to their voters, claiming to be the party of the common man. The only difference is that some donors don't give to both parties, and so different donors get favored depending on who's in power.

I cant speak for 45 years, but it's been this way for at least 25. Do you disagree?

Re:Correction:

[mellon]

What? No they aren't. This isn't telephone service—it's internet service. There are no regulations requiring them to provide service out in the boondocks. Indeed, Verizon and AT&T received massive government subsidies to expand broadband service to rural customers, and then just decided not to do it and kept the money.

When I lived in rural southeastern Arizona, I got my DSL service from Valley Telecom, a local customer-owned cooperative that provides internet service, telephone and cellular to the poorly served areas of that rather sparsely populated corner of the state. I had 1.5mbps DSL in 2006 10 miles up a dirt road outside of Bowie, Arizona, pop. 300, for a very reasonable price, and VTC was doing just fine financially. It was a bit cheaper than my current service from Comcast, but that's precisely because Comcast only serves the areas where it can make a profit.

Meanwhile, back in Verizon territory, my mom, who is on the selectboard of her town (pop. 1200, small but much more dense than Bowie) could not get any kind of broadband in 2006, and the town wound up having to set up their own municipal broadband wireless service using Motorola Canopy radios and a microwave link to Mt. Tom because that's the only way they could avoid a massive drop in property values due to the lack of this essential service in the town, despite the fact that Verizon had been receiving money to pay for installing broadband to towns just like hers for the previous decade.

So maybe some shill from a cable company told you all about how supporting rural customers is why their service is so expensive, but that's a complete load of bullshit. Local and state governments don't currently have authority to impose regulations of this type on ISPs.

Re: Correction:

[josquin9]

I suspect that he's referring to the idea that a lot of people can't shake that stockhoder voting correlates to the voting booth. In fact, corporations tend to be structured so that one person, or a few "like-minded" people maintain sufficient power that no number of new voters will change the direction of the company, since no newly issued stock goes out without existing shareholders having the ability to buy sufficient shares to maintain their majority status. Companies only change when there are tender offers and the majority shares change hand, being purchased by a new, small cadre of like-minded people. Not because a lot of small shareholders ban together to vote a different way. Individual votes are less meaningful than in a general election.

Re:Correction:

[Darinbob]

Subsidy? The USPS is a part of the government, why should they pay taxes? Do they pay the tax to themself? And yet they are self funding, which I would think is some that normally people opposed to government waste would support. Except that it embarrasses the people trying to push the story that all government is inept and incompetent.

Sure it may not be a level playing field with UPS or Fedex, but so what? If we could force those commercial players to lower their rates to USPS rates and to provide universal service, then I'd be more inclined to follow your line of reasoning. When it comes to internet providers the corporations have clearly shown that they have no interest whatsoever in providing universal or reasonable service, which is why municipalities feel the need to have their own service.

Re:Correction:

[geekoid]

Nope.
Over the last 14 years, the Pubs have been bent on openly doing anything they can to hand everything over to larger corporation. It really start with Reagan, but this millennium they just blatantly lie, and when they get called out their media machine just spreads more lies until people with believe it or the next artificial pub 'controversy' comes up.

Don't talk about the dems as if it's balances. Both have issues, but the pubs have become far worse. The are basically extremist at this point.

You have bought into the the trap the pubs have created. 'Both do the same thing to the same degree therefor it doesn't matter.'

And don't even try to guess how I vote. OTOH, I actual watch CSPAN, read bills, and find the context for any statement a politician make that is reported in the media.
Sound bite manipulation needs to stop.

Re:Correction:

[geekoid]

If you solution is get rid of them all, then you are looking for a silver bullet and are to lazy to think about actually fixing the problem. That tells everyone you need to grow up.

In other words...

[jtgd]

"Don't you dare serve the people, you shall only serve the corporations!"

Infurstuctsure

[pellik]

While they're at it state and federal funded roads compete unfairly with privately funded toll roads. Better do something about that.

Compromise? Never heard of it!

[Mystiq]

So according to this guy, we should never make laws or decisions that don't have complete bi-partisan support because the other side will try to repeal it. How would anything get done? At that, we wouldn't have any laws at all. Did he even listen to what he said?

I swear, man. Congresscritters sound more like whiny children every day. This is the epitome of politicians' refusal to compromise on anything. The general intelligence of people in politics must steadily be dropping. They better stay where they are because they sure can't do anything else.

Lord, save us from corporatists

[PopeRatzo]

Why do they play and say talk about a "Republican led FCC" instead of just saying they don't want the FCC to do anything that might mean the least inconvenience for Comcast and AT&T's complete takeover of the Internet?

I mean, for chrissake, Barack Obama, the marxest marxist who ever marxed, appointed goddamn Tom Wheeler, a former cable executive to be chairman of the FCC. Are they disappointed that the chairman of the FCC isn't just Brian Roberts, the CEO of Comcast?

Fucking corporatists. They're not even trying to hide their evil agenda any more. We need another president like Taft or Teddy Roosevelt to just scare the living shit out of big corporations. It's the only way to make them behave. The Clayton Act and other anti-trust legislation ushered in the most productive and prosperous era in US history, and now these sleazy fucks want to take us all the way back to the age of robber barons where young women got burned up in shirt factory fires. Now we've got pussy-ass Barack Obama and Eric Holder who shake with fear every time a CEO so much as looks cross at them. Now, a company breaks the law and the justice department fines them with one hand and passes them the money to pay the fine with the other hand (Citicorp, Goldman Sachs, et al). Two parties, one is completely terrified of the corporatists and the other's got their nose up the corporatists ass. No, they're not the same, but the outcome is the same.

Seriously, there needs to be a goddamn revolution in this country. I'll get behind it 100% as long as it's finished by the start of football season because I'm totally gonna take my fantasy league this year. Or maybe we can just not have the revolution on Sundays or Monday nights. Didn't they used to do that in wars? Take Sunday morning off so everyone could go to church and pray that God help them butcher the other side? Something's got to be done, I tell you. Start the revolution right now while it's still pre-season.

At least, thank god, we get another chance in 2016. Yeah, I know, anybody who gets the nomination from either party is going to be a corporatist, but if I don't hold out some faint hope that something will change, I'll just go shoot myself, and I can't do that because, like I said, I'm going to own fantasy football this year. But, (and thank God for small favors) I won't be enriching Comcast while I do it.

Republican / Democrat is a false dichotomy.

[Anonymous Coward]

By framing the narrative this way the public can be polarized around trivial issues; divide and conquer.

Implying that a a left-wing or democrat controlled FCC would behave differently is misleading -- they are all beholden to the same powerful business interests who play both sides so that they are certain to have the winner in their pocket.

Warning the FCC to not do anything 'anti-republican' is just re-enforcing the imaginary division between left and right in our minds. It doesn't exist. There are only global supra-national corporations and people. Everything else is an intentional distraction.

Besides the corrupt global monetary system, the single most important issue that has allowed us to be reduced to abject serfdom is that corporations are considered persons under the law, which is a development of the last 125 years in the US. This allows management and ownership to escape personal liability for any actions of the organization under his or her control.

Because corps are able to vote with their huge dollars your small dollars are irrelevant -- as are your wants and needs.

Focus on that. Thinking Left/Right is just wasting your time.

Linkbaiting + selective exposure + illiteracy FTW

[Marble68]

Jesus - the hyperbolic circle jerking.. sigh.. Could we get any more f#cking stupid here?

His point is that this should be viewed as beyond the authority of the FCC by both sides; that a bureaucratic panel doesn't have the power to tell individual states how to regulate themselves; and doing so will open a Pandora's box. He illustrates his point by citing SCOTUS precedence, and hypothesizes what sort of dramatic swings would be possible with that power.

Everyone loves HHS - but they forget (let me make his point in a different way) the HHS could effectively slash Abortion coverage at will by simply saying Insurance can't cover it. That's what it's dangerous to give so much power to one position; especially a politically appointed one.

Christ - His biggest mistake, apparently, is forgetting to dumb down his point and talk like everyone is 12.

IMHO, the FCC should just declare ISPs common carriers as a start; then recommend to Congress a law that says the individual citizens have a right to assembly, even in the form of a municipality, and establish publicly held utility services.

Then, it could go back to SCOTUS or whatever.

That's his point. Don't let the FCC ban/require

[raymorris]

You seem to have completely missed his point, so let me break that long sentence into four short sentences for you:

The is FCC deciding if it has the (unconstitutional) power to decide whether or not municipal broadband is built, disregarding state law.
If the FCC assumes that power, a future FCC chairman would therefore have the power to ban municipal broadband.
That would be bad.
Therefore, don't assume new powers that you wouldn't want your successor to have.

I'm not sure if I agree in this case. I do agree with the general principle- if you acquiesce to Obama assuming new powers, president Jeb Bush will inherit those new powers in a couple years.

Re: yeah

[SpockLogic]

Free marketism. It's a fundamentalist religion.

In other news Matthew Berry announced that he was looking forward to taking a highly paid position as VP for Media Obfuscation with a nationwide cable company in the near future.

Re: yeah

[lgw]

This has nothing to do with "free marketism", unless you're in the market for strawmen. This is the opposite.

Do you think most towns can just stand up a muni broadband network on their own? No - they're going to hire some company to build and run their MAN, just the way that many utilities work.

This is existing corporate giants, which have government granted monopolies in many areas (the polar opposite of free marketism), using their political muscle to block competition from new "utility" companies who would be stealing their business.

Re: yeah

[ShanghaiBill]

This has nothing to do with "free marketism", unless you're in the market for strawmen. This is the opposite.

The problem is that the term "free market" is used to mean two completely different things. It is used by economists to mean a market free of barriers to competition. But the same term is often used by others to mean a market free of regulation, which is often the opposite. In this case, the Republicans are opposed to regulations that would make the market more competitive, so they are using free market rhetoric to oppose free market competition. This is a shameful stance for them to take, and goes against the very principles they claim to stand for.

Re: yeah

[ArmoredDragon]

But the same term is often used by others to mean a market free of regulation, which is often the opposite.

Not quite. Regulations currently forbid a free market in this case. What they're proposing is regulation to remove regulation, which is a good thing in my opinion (and yes, I'm one of those evil free market libertarians.)

In my opinion, regulation is perhaps the biggest barrier to faster internet connectivity. Not regulation by the federal government, but regulation by the smaller governments. To include but not limited to regulation that forbids community broadband, regulation that says they have to pay absurdly high lease rates to run cabling through conduit, etc.

Don't ever allow the Republicans to say they are opposed to regulation. Quite the opposite; they love regulation.

The important bit

[BillX]

This has nothing to do with "banning municipal broadband" today, and everything to do with not granting a power at the Fed level that would let a future FCC in 1-2 election cycles do exactly that.

FTFA:

"If the history of American politics teaches us anything, it is that one political party will not remain in power for perpetuity. At some point, to quote Sam Cooke, 'a change is gonna come,'" Berry said. "And that change could come a little more than two years from now. So those who are potential supporters of the current FCC interpreting Section 706 [of the Telecommunications Act] to give the Commission the authority to preempt state laws about municipal broadband should think long and hard about what a future FCC might do with that power."

Arguing that municipal broadband networks could discourage investment by private companies, Berry said, "Itâ(TM)s not hard, then, to imagine a future FCC concluding that taxpayer-funded, municipal broadband projects themselves are barriers to infrastructure investment. So if the current FCC were successful in preempting state and local laws under Section 706, what would stop a future FCC from using Section 706 to forbid states and localities from constructing any future broadband projects? Nothing that I can see."

Re: yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think most towns can just stand up a muni broadband network on their own? No - they're going to hire some company to build and run their MAN, just the way that many utilities work.

I and a friend, ie. 2 people have built 4 municipal broadband networks on our own for 4 separate townships in New Zealand.

So, no, building broadband networks is not difficult and it's not particularly expensive. The hardest part, in New Zealand, at least, is arranging suitable backhaul connections for the networks. Everything else is just leg work and gumboots.

Re: yeah

[Darinbob]

It's about "state's rights". We used to think it was about local control, the small state versus the big federal government. Now we learn it's about removing all control from things smaller than the state as well. State's rights means they don't want a government with power higher up on the food chain than they are, and no government with power lower on the food chain either.

Re: yeah

[Darinbob]

Your argument can be read as both in favor of the ban on municipal broadband as well as opposed to the ban on municipal broadband. It depends on who you think the "government granted monopolies" are, the ones dominating most of the state where no free market exists or the one at the municipal level brought in as a balance of power.

Municipalities should absolutely have the right to do this. This is the local citizen standing up to the status quo of monopolies. The republicans should be the ones backing this since they often are the ones claiming to support individual freedoms and local control rather than a distant out of touch government.

There are municipal run power and water utilities which very often are cheaper than the big boy competitors and much more reponsive to local needs. The same should be true of municipal cable and broadband. It's either that or a country with no choice but Comcast.

Re: yeah

[cyber-vandal]

I live in the heavily regulated UK and I have a choice of cable from one provider at 152Mbps, FTTC at 78Mbps from about 6 others or normal ADSL2 at around 17Mbps from about 40 others. The infrastructure (with the exception of cable) is run by the former government monopoly which is required by law to sell access to its network to other providers. The barrier to entry is the expense of creating the infrastructure in the first place which would exist even if there was no regulation.