December 29th, 2006
By Tim Karr, Save the Internet Coalition
[See below for a range of opinions by Tim Wu, GigaOm blog and Lauren Weinstein]
In what many Internet freedom advocates are considering an important victory, AT&T officials agreed on Thursday night to adhere to strict Network Neutrality conditions if allowed to complete their proposed $85 billion merger with BellSouth.
The phone company filed a “letter of commitment” with the Federal Communications Commission in which it promises to observe Net Neutrality principles for 30 months. Now it’s left to Congress to follow the FCC’s lead and make Net Neutrality permanent under the law.
According to AT&T’s letter, the merged company:
“… commits that it will maintain a neutral network and neutral routing in its wireline broadband Internet access service. This commitment shall be satisfied by AT&T/BellSouth’s agreement not to provide or to sell to Internet content, application, or service providers, including those affiliated with AT&T/BellSouth, any service that privileges, degrades or prioritizes any packet transmitted over AT&T/BellSouth’s wireline broadband Internet access service based on its source, ownership or destination.”
AT&T’s concession followed more than a week of often pointed negotiations with the two Democrats on the commission, Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein. This was compounded by tens of thousands of letters from SavetheInternet.com and Free Press activists who demanded that the FCC allow no merger without Net Neutrality.
Approval of the merger by the full commission could come as early as Friday, according to the Associated Press.
AT&T’s agreement puts to rest their own CEO’s argument that Net Neutrality doesn’t really exist. The phone giant just committed to observing Net Neutrality and defined it in the text of its letter.
It also puts to rest the bogus argument that Net Neutrality will cripple the largest phone companies’ plans to build out broadband services. AT&T agreed to this condition — and also to offer cheaper broadband services – and yet they continue to expand their networks and offer services to the tune of $24.5 billion in gross annual profits in 2006.
AT&T’s agreement to these merger terms reduces to industry spin their argument that Net Neutrality and profit are mutually exclusive.
Now It’s Up To Congress
Now that the FCC and AT&T have agreed that Net Neutrality is right for the future of the Internet, it’s time for Congress to forge legislation that instills this guiding principle into law.
As Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott recently said, “We are no longer having a debate about whether Net Neutrality should be the law of the land; we are having a debate about how and when.”
With the help of FCC Commissioners Adelstein and Copps — who held out for Net Neutrality against intense pressure from Chairman Kevin Martin and AT&T lobbyists — we have won more than a temporary condition on a mega-merger. They have set the bar for the future of the Internet, and paved our path to success on Capitol Hill.
“Making Net Neutrality a condition of the largest merger in telecommunications history sets an important precedent,” Scott said on Thursday. “It’s now up to the new Congress to craft a forward-looking broadband policy that will bring the benefits of the Internet to all Americans. For free speech, democratic participation and economic innovation to thrive online, Net Neutrality must be the law.”
********************************************
AT&T Knows When to Fold ‘em
From GigaOm Blog
http://gigaom.com/2006/12/29/att-knows-when-to-fold-em/
Look, we told you the AT&T-BellSouth deal would get done. And with all its lawyers and lobbyists, it’s no surprise that AT&T made the smart political move, suggesting a few minor concessions that should grease the wheels at the FCC and help make Ma Bell bigger, sooner.
While it may be painted elsewhere as a victory for the Net neutrality team, don’t be fooled: Jim Ciccone and crew know it’s better to agree to the FCC’s watered-down version of NN rules than to play hardball and give Ed Markey an excuse to start hearings immediately in 2007.
Though big telcos can probably always count on the Bush administration to veto any laws they find unacceptable, they are probably guessing that the prez will have other things than telecom reform on his front burner for the near future.
And while the concession to supply naked DSL seems to have some teeth attached this time around (unlike last time), the fine print shows that AT&T only agrees to put a $19.95-per-month price tag on 768Kbps service, a speed which in a year may seem as quaint as dial-up does today. Remember this wording, after the 768K stuff: “AT&T/BellSouth may make available such services at other speeds at prices that are competitive with the broadband market taken as a whole.” In other words, 1.5K DSL and voice for… $20.95.
Smackdown score? By making AT&T back down a bit, Dem commissioners Copps and Adelstein earn at least a draw here. Chairman Kev will try to paint this one as a much-needed win, but all those really involved know that the telco taskmasters aren’t happy about how it all went down. No bracelet here for Martin.
********************************************
LAUREN WEINSTEIN, A DISSENTING OPINION:
AT&T's New "Network Neutrality" Concessions Are Laughable
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000205.html
Greetings. Wire services are reporting that AT&T has offered a set of new "concessions" to the FCC in hopes of gaining quick approval for AT&T's merger with BellSouth, as the march continues toward resurrecting the "glory" days of the telecom oligarchy.
Many observers appear to feel that these concessions, relating to a number of different areas of contention, will hasten quick FCC approval, perhaps within days.
Unfortunately, from any sort of realistic perspective, the concessions being discussed are laughable in terms of their actual impact. They would have little if any lasting effect, and if history is any guide, will be used as excuses to justify future anticompetitive behaviors.
In particular, AT&T's offer to abide by some Internet "network neutrality principles" for a reported 24 months is utterly worthless. The sorts of abuses that genuine network neutrality legislation is meant to prevent are not a matter of the next two years, they are serious risks that would likely have negative repercussions for decades.
It is crucial that we do not allow these sorts of sucker-bait offers to distract us from the critical need for effective Internet network neutrality legislation at the federal level.
More on this next year. Have a great New Year's Day!
Lauren Weinstein
Co-Founder, People For Internet Responsibility, International Open Internet Coalition;
Founder, California Initiative For Internet Privacy, PRIVACY Forum
********************************************
TIM WU's TAKE: Why the AT&T Merger is a Milestone in the History of the Internet
By Tim Wu, Professor of Law, Columbia University
To the lay reader the AT&T merger agreement may appear highly technical. It is, however, a milestone, and may even be remembered as an important moment in Internet history. Most notable is the agreement's striking inclusion of the first strong Network Neutrality language yet seen in any broadband regulatory device.
Professor Tim Wu of Columbia Law School
The language in the agreement is written for a purpose: to preserve the most attractive features of the Internet as it now exists. Some perspective may be useful. In the 20th Century, at crucial points, technologies like radio and the recording industry moved from being lively and vital decentralized industries toward much more centralized control, often due to misguided government policy and industry consolidation. Stated simply, this agreement forms part of a general movement to prevent a similar fate for the Internet.
At a level of theory, the language in the agreement is premised on a belief in the merits of a neutral network, and in particular its cultural, political, and economic benefits. The preservation of an open communications network as a catalyst for these sectors, without unfairly restricting AT&T's business, appears to be the motivating force behind the agreed upon language.
Analysis of the Network Neutrality Provisions
Strikingly, AT&T commits to a basic set of Network Neutrality principles that establish a baseline of great importance. They do not create a pure "bit-discrimination rule," but this language is crafted as a practical implementation of neutrality. As the first working rule, it may serve as a model and an experiment for what follows, which is why it merits attention.
After a first paragraph affirming Michael Powell's "Network Freedoms," the agreement has three crucial paragraphs:
1. An Antidiscrimination Rule,
2. A Statement of Scope,
3. Stated Exclusions, and
4. Duration.
1. The Antidiscrimination Rule.
Network Neutrality rules prohibit discrimination on broadband networks. The second paragraph states:
"AT&T/BellSouth also commits that it will maintain a neutral network and neutral routing in its wireline broadband Internet access service. This commitment shall be satisfied by AT&T/BellSouth's agreement not to provide or to sell to Internet content, application, or service providers, including those affiliated with AT&T/BellSouth, any service that privileges, degrades or prioritizes any packet transmitted over AT&T/BellSouth's wireline broadband Internet access service based on its source, ownership or destination."
This is a strong but not extreme form of a basic Network Neutrality rule (it has similarities to a bill proposed by Senator Olympia Snowe last year). This rule effectively bars discrimination against bits on the network on the basis of source, ownership, or destination. It forbids AT&T from, for example, selling Yahoo or CNN priority access to its customers over its broadband networks, and favoring those content sources over unaffiliated blogs or search engines.
But the rule does not ban all forms of discrimination. The agreement takes the position that (like cholesterol) not all forms of differential treatment are bad. Interestingly, the agreement does not prevent AT&T from treating different media carried on the Internet differently, so long as the carrier does not discriminate between who is providing the content. AT&T, under this agreement, may speed all the Internet video traffic on its network (to compete, for example, with cable). But it cannot pick and choose whose video traffic to speed up. In short, AT&T must treat like traffic alike--that is the essence of the agreement.
"Like-treatment" is not a pure ban on bit-discrimination, and the theory behind the "like-treatment" approach merits discussion. It is, on the one hand, meant to preserve a basic parity and meritocracy as between competing Internet application and content providers. For example, the video providers Yahoo-video and YouTube must be accorded like treatment. Yet carriers may improve how they carry all video -- to remedy, for example, for the Internet's historical design bias in favor of data traffic. Whether AT&T will actually do so is unknown, but this rule leaves open the possibility.
2. Scope
Where the Network Neutrality rule applies can be as important as what the rule is. Paragraph 3 says:
"This commitment shall apply to AT&T/BellSouth's wireline broadband Internet access service from the network side of the customer premise equipment up to and including the Internet Exchange Point closest to the customer's premise, defined as the point of interconnection that is logically, temporally or physically closest to the customer's premise where public or private Internet backbone networks freely exchange Internet packets."
This language makes it clear that the Network Neutrality rule applies to both the "last mile" and "metro" or "backhaul" networks, but not to the Internet "core" or "backbone."
Some might argue that excluding the backbone is too favorable to AT&T. The company is, after all, a major Tier 1 provider, and one of the two largest owners of routers on the Internet core (see this map.) Arguably an anti-discrimination rule should apply everywhere.
However, there are several defensible reasons to exclude the Internet's backbone at least at the present time. The first is the existence of a working, de facto neutrality scheme. At present, the core of the Internet is managed on a cooperative basis, largely on a "peer" basis by a number of tier 1 and tier 2 carriers, carrying enormous volumes of Internet traffic. Maintaining the proper routing of that traffic is a significant technical challenge that both carriers and router manufacturers struggle with. The existing cooperation necessary to support the backbone work leaves less room for pernicious discrimination, at least for now.
Second, the agreement is also sensitive to the fact that there may be needs in the core for large scale traffic management just to keep Internet traffic moving at a reasonable speed. So far there are few reports of such traffic management techniques being used for pernicious as opposed to salutary purposes.
Third and finally, AT&T's duty to peer in the backbone are dealt with in a different part of the merger agreement. Generally, AT&T is required to maintain the same level of peering that it maintains today.
3. Exclusions
Some of the most difficult sections of the agreement are the exclusions. There are two enumerated exclusions: for "enterprise managed IP services" and "IPTV." These two exemptions are themselves limited by a further condition on the exclusions.
"Enterprise managed IP services" are services that most consumers are largely unaware of. They include services that AT&T sells to large or very specialized customers, including connections between different business offices, or Internet connections to data centers (sites that house hosting services) and many others. As matters stand today, many of these service offerings are highly managed in ways that violate the Network Neutrality rule in paragraph two. For example, imagine AT&T were providing connectivity to servers leased by Victoria Secret, Inc., during their popular annual fashion show. It might reserve or increase the bandwidth between the Victoria Secret servers and the network backbone during the course of the fashion show (but, notably, not provide priority over the last mile). The exception would cover such "server-side" traffic management.
Not everyone will agree that the enterprise managed IP services exception is a good idea. A purer and alternative approach would demand neutrality for all services that use the Internet Protocol addressing system and numbers assigned by the Internet Naming and Numbering Authority. However that is not the approach taken by the agreement. The truth is, at this time, not enough is known about the effects and issues surrounding discrimination in enterprise managed IP services to come to any firm conclusions. However, it seems doubtful that these practices, which occur already, will substantially erode the basic service parity on the Internet today. So long as YouTube or Yahoo-Video has the same right to reach a consumer through the last-mile as the hypothetical fashion show, the better content should win.
The second exception is for AT&T's IPTV services. These services are IP in name only. They are in practice and architecture a direct competitor to cable television services. These services use only the private infrastructure built by AT&T, and do not rely on the public Internet as described by IP addresses. Hence the exclusion of private IPTV services should be considered less controversial. In fact, were the Network Neutrality rules to apply to IPTV, it is doubtful that AT&T could offer its competing cable television services, leaving the cable market with even less competition.
Both exceptions are limited by an important final sentence designed to prevent the exemptions, however used, from violating the basic Network Neutrality requirements described above. This limitation blocks any mischief that might be conducted by renaming broadband services into an excluded category in order to evade the rule.
4. Duration
The agreement lasts two years or until Congress passes a Network Neutrality bill. The two-year framework should provide time to assess the impact of the rule, and consider its extension to other carriers or a broader array of wireless networks. One possibility is that AT&T will, in time, find the rule to its liking, as it provides a corporate pre-commitment against ill-advised "value-added" schemes that may prove financially disastrous. However, much remains to be seen.
What is clear is that this agreement marks a critical moment in the recent history of Network Neutrality and big step forward for its supporters.
-- Tim Wu is a professor at Columbia Law School, specializing in telecommunications law, copyright, and international trade. He is the co-author of "Who Controls the Internet?" and a charter member of the SavetheInternet.com Coalition
Media Alliance and our coalition partners at SavetheInternet have launched this YouTube “micro documentary” on Net Neutrality to celebrate our 2006 victory against entrenched corporate interests – killing Senator Stevens’ bad “tubes” bill -- and to fire up the grass and net roots for the challenges ahead.
The video is a quick teaser. We’ll be launching a bigger vision video in mid January that sets forth SavetheInternet.com’s plans to go on the offensive in 2007 and win lasting reforms for a faster, more open and accessible broadband for everyone.
Stay tuned to MA's site and be sure to renew your membership so we can keep doing this important work. Enjoy!
12/18/06
Very good, breaking news: The swing vote at the FCC on the massive ATT/BellSouth merger, Republican Commissioner McDowell, is sticking to his commendable ethical stance of recusing himself due to a conflict of interest.
With a tremendous amount at stake for the future of the Internet and telecommunications in the U.S., Chairman Martin went to the unprecedented measure of getting a legal ruling "allowing" McDowell to un-recuse himself and participate in the vote, despite his stated conflict of interest. Martin, a former high-level Bush advisor, presumably sought McDowell's vote to push the deal through without the public interest protections being insisted upon by the two Democrats, Copps and Adelstein (protections that include Net Neutrality).
Media Alliance's DC allies at Free Press released this statement:
"We applaud Commissioner McDowell's decision to stay out of the AT&T-BellSouth merger. He was under intense pressure to rubber-stamp this deal but instead put ethics ahead of expediency. He has put the public interest first and set the table for a consumer-friendly resolution of this merger. Now the other commissioners can return to the business of making good public policy. We're optimistic that all sides will return to the table for good-faith negotiations on merger conditions that will protect consumers and maintain a neutral and open Internet.
By Jonathan Rintels
The Huffington Post
Alas, the incredible euphoria of Time Magazine picking You and Me as their Person(s) of the Year for 2006 can't last forever. No more all night parties. No more dancing in the virtual streets. It's time to sober up and realize how all this wonderful - and less wonderful - user created content celebrated by Time almost didn't happen; how fragile our ability to post our content on the Internet really is; and, how the telephone and cable companies that monopolize broadband Internet access want 2007 to be the year not of Us, but of Them.
The entire phenomenon of a huge audience reaching home brewed content created by Us relies upon consumers having the right - and opportunity -- to choose what websites they visit. Today, we have that, and it's called "Net Neutrality." But the handful of telephone and cable companies that control the market for broadband Internet access - over 98 percent market share for cable and DSL! -- have spent hundreds of millions of dollars this year to persuade Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that they should be able to control what content streams over their "pipes" and what websites their captive customers can visit.
The companies' plan is to force content producers to pay extra fees and tolls for so-called "priority" service, while relegating those who don't pay to the Digital Dirt Road. Who will pay those fees and tolls? Those who can afford to - the already fat, established, and constipated Big Media and Old Media -- at the expense of the creative, hustling, innovative, and entrepreneurial. Had this Pay to Play on the Net System been permitted a few years ago, Google would still be in a garage. Rocketboom would be Rocketbust. YouTube? Try TheirTube.
Time's Person of the Year - those of us who rely on an open Internet to create and distribute our content - would be stillborn.
And, of course, one delicious irony in all this is that Time Magazine's parent company owns Time Warner Cable, one of the key opponents of Net Neutrality, confirming the adage that bedfellows make strange politics.
Fortunately, after a huge grassroots uprising, Congress failed to pass legislation full of Big Wet Kisses for the cable and telephone companies, including a thorough gutting of Net Neutrality. Meanwhile, at the FCC, Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein have taken a strong stand for Net Neutrality conditions on the anti-competitive AT&T/BellSouth merger. Likely Copps and Adelstein will get coal in their stockings from AT&T CEO Edward Whitacre, who has threatened: "How do you think they're (websites like Google) going to get to customers? Through a broadband pipe. Cable companies have them. We have them. Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that... For a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!"
Today, there's news that most of the TV networks want to jointly form an online video site to compete with YouTube and Google Video. These lumbering leviathans are just now "getting" that online video is not a fad, and that it's time to put the genie that threatens their business models back into the bottle. Which is telling testimony as to why we need Net Neutrality - it provides a level playing field that allows the creative, nimble, and entrepreneurial an equal opportunity to create innovative content and applications on the Net.
In essence, what Time is celebrating is that We the People of the Year are running rings around Old Media. But that wouldn't have been possible in a world without Net Neutrality. Big, Old Media would have its video online, it would be paying the extra fees to the monopoly broadband providers to drive their captive consumers to their sites, and We the People of the Year would be relegated to the Digital Dirt Road where consumers might never find us. Or, if they did find us, the user experience would be degraded, so that it couldn't compete against the Big, Old Media priority service experience. That user-created content phenomenon celebrated by Time would likely never have happened. And this year's Person of the Year would be ?????????
Time Magazine made You the Person of the Year. All of us should now redouble our efforts to protect Net Neutrality, so that in 2007, Time's parent, Time Warner, and its fellow broadband monopolists, won't make You toast.
Check it out today: http://beta.newstrust.net/
We're just starting to tinker with this new interactive, trust-based and free news service. It's early yet, but clearly the project is intended to encourage good journalism, media literacy and accountability and civic engagement.
Read on to see what the folks behind NewsTrust are saying about it...
"NewsTrust is a citizen news service that helps people find good journalism
online. This next-generation social network features some of the best news
and opinions from hundreds of trusted online sources. NewsTrust members
rate news stories based on journalistic quality, not just popularity.
It's a great way to get "news you can trust" all in one place. NewsTrust
offers a fine selection of quality journalism on their free web site,
which is now open to the public: http://beta.newstrust.net/
NewsTrust encourages both media literacy and civic engagement. NewsTrust
review tools guide members through careful news evaluations, based on key
journalistic principles such as fairness, balance, evidence, context and
importance. Independent research studies show that citizen reviewers using
these review tools can evaluate news quality reliably - and as effectively
as experienced journalists.
NewsTrust publishes a quality ratings database for hundreds of mainstream
and alternative news sources, to help the public identify trustworthy
publications. This valuable online knowledge base about the news media was
created to help citizens make more informed decisions about our democracy.
NewsTrust is non-profit, non-partisan and member-driven. NewsTrust's
Executive Director, Fabrice Florin, is a former journalist and a digital
media pioneer at Apple and Macromedia. The NewsTrust team includes
award-winning journalist and media executive Rory O'Connor and former
Lucasfilm project manager David Fox, who bring extensive track records in
content and technology development. NewsTrust advisors include Dan
Gillmor, Howard Rheingold and other digital media innovators from
organizations like Google, Harvard, MoveOn and the University of
California."