ACA Summit: Pai: Open Internet Order Was 'Galling Regulatory Onslaught’ | Multichannel

ACA Summit: Pai: Open Internet Order Was 'Galling Regulatory Onslaught’ | Multichannel: U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai praised smaller cable operators for broadband deployment and as a competitive force, and renewed his attacks on edge providers in the network neutrality rule debate. Pai took aim at edge providers he said had pushed Title II on ISPs large and small. Those edge providers are an increasingly familiar target in Washington in conversations about power over internet content.

"Silicon Valley tech giants with market caps in the hundreds of billions of dollars demanded that the FCC regulate small companies like yours more heavily than they were!," he said. "That’s right... [T]hey claimed that small broadband providers like Spencer Municipal Utilities and Laurens Municipal Utilities were anticompetitive monopolists who posed a greater threat to a free and open Internet than companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter."

The thing is Mr. Chairman, telecommunications infrastructure is a natural monopoly. It doesn't matter whether it's owned by big players like Charter and AT&T or small cable companies. It thus requires a regulatory scheme predicated on that monopolistic reality. The FCC's 2015 Open Internet rulemaking does so in treating it as a common carrier utility as basic telephone service was in the pre-Internet era under Title II of the Communications Act.

U.S. can't solve its telecom infrastructure deficiencies until it accurately defines the problem

Senate Kicks Off Series of Infrastructure Hearings With Focus on Broadband | Broadcasting & Cable: The Senate Commerce Committee kicked off a series of infrastructure hearings Tuesday with one focused on broadband, including a big focus on collecting accurate date about where broadband is, and more importantly, isn't. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) presided, saying he was greatly encouraged by the President's support for programs to increase broadband infrastructure in rural areas. While the President said getting broadband to farmers was a priority, he didn't actually earmark any funds for broadband in his infrastructure plan, though he did say that $50 million would be going to rural infrastructure, with states free to use all or part of that for broadband. Congress is currently weighing the best way to deploy that service. Democrats like to factor cost and underserved communities in the equation, while Republicans -- and ISPs -- want the money targeted to the unserved, rather than overbuilding existing private investment with public money.

The adage that a problem cannot be solved until it's properly defined certainly applies here. America doesn't have a problem of communities being "underserved" by advanced telecommunications. The real problem is that it has failed to put in place policy and planning over recent decades to support the timely modernization of legacy metallic telephone and cable company infrastructure designed to support analog voice telephone service and cable TV to digital fiber optic infrastructure connecting all the nation's homes, businesses and institutions for the Internet era.

It's not accurate to describe the problem as one of entire "underserved communities." The real issue is existing public policy that does not support universal service but rather the redlining of discrete neighborhoods and even parts of roads and streets by landline ISPs in both rural and non-rural areas of the nation.

FCC Chair Pai falsely characterizes satellite Internet as innovative telecom technology

REMARKS OF FCC CHAIRMAN AJIT PAI
AT THE SATELLITE INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION’S
21ST ANNUAL LEADERSHIP DINNER
WASHINGTON, DC
MARCH 12, 2018

Next-generation satellites are bringing new competition to the broadband marketplace and new opportunities for rural Americans who have had no access to high-speed Internet access for far too long. That’s why the FCC under my leadership has moved quickly to give a green light to satellite innovators.

Here, U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai falsely characterizes satellite delivered Internet connectivity as innovative. It is not. It's been around since the 1990s as a forced option for Americans who needed better than glacial dialup Internet access over legacy copper telephone lines but weren't offered DSL or later by cable companies.

We’ve also made satellite broadband providers eligible for our upcoming Connect America Fund Phase II reverse auction, which will provide up to $2 billion over ten years to expand broadband deployment in rural America. To be sure, I understand that the satellite industry disagreed with some of the decisions that the FCC made in developing rules for the reverse auction. We are forging new ground with this first-of-its-kind auction, and in doing so we had to make some hard choices. But, I nonetheless hope that satellite companies will study this opportunity closely and choose to participate in the reverse auction. 

This is an incredible waste of subsidy funding. With satellite, the FCC is subsidizing a substandard and kludgy form of connectivity subject to high latency and bandwidth usage caps. Subsidies should instead go to deploying fiber to the premise connections that offer far superior connectivity and aren't as subject to obsolescence.