The excerpts below describe the current state of telecommunications and broadband policy and the corporate, legal, and legislative moves that have shaped them:

Americans pay more per month for broadband than consumers in all but seven of the 30 nations in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

…Nowhere is this digital mediocrity more evident than in the state of competition in our broadband markets. In the aftermath of the 1996 Act [Federal Telecommunications Act of 1996], the average American consumer had access to more than a dozen ISPs; today, our broadband market is a stagnant duopoly. Nationwide, incumbent phone and cable companies control 97 percent of the fixed-line residential broadband market. When complementary (and slow and expensive) mobile data connections are factored in, the incumbent phone and cable companies’ nationwide market share stands at 95 percent.

…Today, the FCC throws almost $5 billion per year down the drain by inefficiently supporting legacy telephone technologies while, 20 million rural Americans live in areas unserved by any broadband provider. This is especially wasteful given the fact that in the 1996 Act, Congress directed the FCC to treat universal service as “evolving” and to modernize the support system to account for advances in technology.

… While cellular companies have widely deployed 3G-level “high-speed” Internet services, this technology has not yet shown to be a viable substitute for a dedicated fixed home broadband line (what’s more, the same incumbent telephone companies control more than 80 percent of the mobile high-speed Internet market, and these services are far slower and far more expensive than a typical DSL or cable modem line).

… The FCC first dealt with the issue of two-way cable modem communications in its consideration of the merger between AT&T and TCI cable. In that proceeding, many parties petitioned the Commission to require that independent ISPs be granted access to the cable system as a condition of the merger. The Commission in its 1999 ruling declined to mandate such open access on the grounds that the merging parties agreed to allow their customers unfettered open access to the Internet. A year later, in another cable merger proceeding, the FCC once again decided against imposing open access conditions on AT&T Cable because the company made promises that it would negotiate independent access contracts with unaffiliated ISPs. This is a typical pattern in broadband matters at the FCC: Give companies whatever anti-competitive “relief” they are seeking in exchange for unenforceable promises to allow third-party access at some future point.

… Not only are mobile data services not a substitute for fixed broadband, but these 3G devices are so slow they don’t deserve to be classified as “broadband.” Real world speed tests of devices that are supposed to be able to deliver more than 3 Mbps in downstream speeds reveals that these devices can only deliver about a third of that when used in a fixed setting. When used in a mobile setting, the downstream speeds drop well below 1 Mbps (see Figure 23).

… Verizon undertook a large-scale fiber-to-the-home deployment effort. Yet this effort is unique among the other incumbents, and only extends to a fraction of Verizon’s service territory; FiOS is available in less than 10 percent of U.S. homes. Companies like AT&T and Qwest have affirmatively decided against fiber-to-the-home deployments, instead choosing to milk the legacy copper network for years to come. AT&T, and, to a much lesser extent, Qwest, have finally recently deployed some limited “VDSL” upgrades. But overseas telcos implemented similar “innovated broadband capability” upgrades years ago and are already deploying even faster VDSL2+ pair-bonded technology.

This earlier post contains excerpts of the book dealing with internet open access, or “net neutrality.”

The FCC didn’t name citizens as stakeholders; instead, it asked for input from American consumers. Why, in so many cases, are we consumers instead of citizens? Does the FCC define our interest solely on the basis of our monthly ISP bill and what’s included on it? Shouldn’t civic interests in a “national broadband plan” override consumer interests? Is this a semantic gesture to advocates of the free enterprise system? Here’s the last part of the call –

We seek comment in this Notice from all interested parties on the elements that should go into a national broadband plan. Our plan must reflect an understanding of the problem, clear goals for the future, a route to those goals, and benchmarks along the way. Our plan must also allow for modification as we learn from our experience. And our plan must reflect the input of all stakeholders—industry, American consumers; large and small businesses; federal, state, local, and tribal governments; nonprofits; and disabilities communities. With this Notice, we begin to make our plan.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 is widely acknowledged to have been heavily influenced by the telecom industry. Further, as the Free Press notes in its May 2009 book Changing Media, those provisions of the 1996 act that were intended to keep markets open for competition and provide more choices to citizens were subsequently quashed by telecom companies who sought changes in definitions, appeals, and changes in how the law was applied.

This time around, citizens should insist on getting the best technology and the best service, along with a range of choices at reasonable prices. The telecom companies should not be allowed to shut out competition, to receive egregious subsidies, to set tiered pricing or other restricted access schemes, or to change definitions and applications, without citizens’ approval, once a plan is instituted.

Citizens: Check out the Notice of Inquiry, and send in your comments by June 8, 2009 (the end of the document has instructions for submitting comments).

The Free Press just published Changing Media: Public Interest Policies for the Digital Age, a free downloadable book.

The book explains how telecommunications policy since 2000 has quashed competition among internet service providers, covers the Net Neutrality controversy of open internet access, and explores solutions to the crisis facing public interest journalism.

Open internet recommendations in the book have widespread support, with the notable exception of large broadband providers and their business lobbies. Free Press contends that the FCC should preserve “nondiscrimination” to prevent those owning the pipeline from setting tiered prices for access, speed, and content. Extended excerpts from the document are below:

How should the FCC design a nondiscrimination principle or rule?

First, nondiscrimination rules must prohibit Internet access providers from blocking, discriminating against or otherwise degrading any lawful content, applications or services.

…Second, nondiscrimination rules must prohibit network operators from selling or offering any capacity to prioritize some Internet packets over others, whether to a third party or to an affiliate… Nondiscrimination rules must prevent the creation of two separate lanes of traffic for Internet packets, particularly when access to the “fast lane” is available only to the network owner’s affiliated content or to the highest bidders.

…Finally, nondiscrimination rules must prohibit Internet access providers from charging additional fees to allow specific types of Internet content, applications or services to be used. As with prioritization of Internet packets, charging special fees for certain uses of the Internet – for example, selling two subscription levels, where a “basic” level does not allow P2P communications but a “premium” level does — raises the costs of entry, increases costs for consumers, and turns the Internet into a form of pay-for-play media like cable TV. To avoid limiting innovation and
consumer choice, nondiscrimination rules must prohibit any discriminatory fees for specific content, applications or services.

…Enshrining nondiscrimination into the Internet Policy Statement and codifying these principles into rules for all technologies delivering Internet access — including wireless technologies — should be a top priority for the FCC. It should also be a top priority for Congress. Though the Commission has the clear authority to directly deal with this issue, it would be a cleaner process if Congress were to put Network Neutrality explicitly back into the law. This would give the Commission a mandate to proceed, and would ward off the eventual legal process that will follow Commission action.

…The notion that discrimination is needed to encourage investment has been completely discredited.

…It is frustrating that there is even a debate over Network Neutrality, because neutrality is the very lifeblood of the network; it is what made the Internet into a service that companies like AT&T and Comcast could get rich selling.