In a startling turn of events, I’m starting tonight’s edition of Tech at Night at 6pm, roughly 8 hours earlier than I have been starting it lately. Imagine that.
Top story is a shocker. I mean, I had no idea the Democrats would get this far out there. Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, wants to pass a national sales tax solely on Internet transactions. The sole purpose of this bill is to raise prices on all Americans who buy things online. This is basic stuff, folks. Every Republican needs to oppose this concept. Every single one. I will be taking names of the deadbeats who join with the Democrats on this, and I will be pushing for sanctions at the ballot box.
Meanwhile, The FCC is in need of major reform. Need to know why? Let’s start with this Harvard Business review look at the FCC. It’s not the most accessibly-written article, but it explains how the FCC is basically rigging its competition analyses to prevent itself from having to demonstrate that the wireless market is competitive. Direct evidence of competitive prices abounds, even in markets with less competition. I like this conclusion:
If regulators are opposed to consolidation as a means of addressing the spectrum crunch, the remedy is not to deny a licensee the right to sell or trade their spectrum as they see fit, but rather to get on the stick and get more spectrum out there faster. As in now.
House Republicans are on the case, too.
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Happy weekend, all. To get personal, had some real excitement on my end. Preemptively replaced my chair before it fell apart, since the last one I let fall apart collapsed while I was sitting in it. I was lucky the only injury I took was a smack on each arm. But, the new chair had the LUMBAR PAD OF DOOM which started killing my back. I’ve gotten the chair adjusted, pulling the Death Pad™ way back, stopped using my pillow which changed the positioning of the pad on my back, and all should be well now. Yes, I somehow take a profession that involves sitting down and still manage to be injury-prone.
So, we’re back to talking about competition again. The FCC has announced what its rules will be for the AT&T/T-Mobile deal. Says Cnet: “First it has to determine if the deal will meet specific requirements in the Communications Act and FCC rules. And second it will determine if the merger is in the public interest.” I expect that the Communications Act won’t be a big deal, but the “public interest” fudge will be the big fight.
What the left isn’t going to allow the possibility of, though, is the idea that this acquisition might be needed just to keep AT&T competitive with Verizon at the top. Reports like this from the American Consumer Institute should inform the FCC, though. Catch this key takeaway of the market after a series of mergers it’s already seen: “The combination of higher usage and lower prices means that consumer welfare has increased significantly – not what would be expected from a “failed market.””
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That’s one of the most boring and least unique Tech at Night titles ever, but I’m going to war with the links I have.
Slade Gorton’s priorities are horribly wrong. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. On Tuesday the Greg Walden subcommittee held hearings on “Use of Spectrum with Public Safety.” I’ve already explained why I think the D Block of wireless spectrum needs to be allocated directly to public safety, but Gorton’s argument for putting the D block up to auction is ridiculous. So says Energy and Commerce’s press release:
Gorton testified that auctioning “the D Block to the private sector will reduce the deficit, empower huge investments in new technology and job creation, and will meet the very real needs of our vital public safety sector.”
We already tried auctioning the D block. It did none of the above. And why should we try to reduce the deficit with a one-time payment from the pockets of first responders? That seems all wrong to me.
I know civil defense has a mixed record historically, when it was promoted by some as an alternative to tough-minded deterrence of nuclear war. But the threat of retaliation doesn’t work against jihadis. We need to be prepared to react to attacks better than we did on 9/11.
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Today, the House of Representatives voted to repeal Net Neutrality. H.J. Res 37, a resolution invoking the Congressional Review Act to reverse the FCC’s Net Neutrality order, passed the House under H.Res 200 by a 241-178 vote. Republicans voted 236-0 for repeal, while Democrats voted 178-5 against repeal. The five Democrats? Boren of OK, Conyers of MI, Costa of CA, Peterson of MN, and Shuler of NC. So of the Democrats you called, two went our way. We’ll have to remember the ones who chose to side with the San Francisco Democrat agenda instead of the (slightly) bipartisan position.
I feel good about this big win in the House today. I’ll let Fred Upton tell you why this vote was important:
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The final House vote is coming to repeal Net Neutrality via the Congressional Review Act. I’m pretty interested to see how many Democrats we can get in the House, because it may give a clue of how many Democrats we can get in the Senate. Remember: under the CRA we only need 51, not 60.
I hope we don’t have to fire up the CRA next over socialist wireless data roaming regulation. As I pointed out earlier this week, Sprint stopped investing in its network, while AT&T and Verizon spent even more. So now Sprint customers end up having to roam more when off of Sprint’s network. Should Sprint be allowed to make up for that by getting the government to force a special deal? I don’t think so. Regulation should reward investors and punish free riders. Only then do we truly look out for the public, the people who need more investment made.
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The House of Representatives is likely to vote tomorrow, Thursday, on the repeal of the FCC’s Net Neutrality power grab. Using the Congressional Review Act, the repeal of the Net Neutrality order can be accomplished in an expedited way. In particular this means the bill cannot be filibustered in the Senate, so passing it means something.
This is our first opportunity to rein in the Barack Obama Administration’s ongoing, all-encompassing effort to bypass Congress and enact their Leftist policies via executive branch regulatory fiat.
There are thirteen swing-district Democrats on whom pressure has been put by their leadership to stand for the ridiculous and oppressive notion that is Net Neutrality – by voting Nay on the CRA Resolution.
Let’s persuade them otherwise, shall we?
| Democrats in Question | Phone | Fax | |
| Jason Altmire (PA-4) | (202) 225-2565 | Jason.Altmire@mail.house.gov | (202) 226-2274 |
| Sanford Bishop (GA-2) | (202) 225-3631 | Sanford.Bishop@mail.house.gov | (202) 225-2203 |
| Leonard Boswell (IA-3) | (202) 225-3806 | lbos.ia3@mail.house.gov | (202) 225-5608 |
| Jim Costa (CA-20) | (202) 225-3341 | jimcostamc@mail.house.gov | (202) 225-9308 |
| Henry Cuellar (TX-28) | (202) 225-1640 | from website | (202) 225-1641 |
| Reuben Hinojosa (TX-15) | (202) 225-2531 | Rep.Hinojosa@mail.house.gov | (202) 225-5688 |
| Tim Holden (PA-17) | (202) 225-5546 | from website | (202) 226-0996 |
| Rick Larsen (WA-2) | (202) 225-2605 | Rick.Larsen@mail.house.gov | (202) 225-4420 |
| Mike McIntyre (NC-7) | (202) 225-2731 | from website | (202) 225-5773 |
| Jerry McNerney (CA-11) | (202) 225-1947 | from website | (202) 225-4060 |
| Gregory Meeks (NY-6) | (202) 225-3461 | from website | (202) 226-4169 |
| David Scott (GA-13) | (202) 225-2939 | from website | (202) 225-4628 |
| Heath Shuler (NC-11) | (202) 225-6401 | Heath.Shuler@mail.house.gov | (202) 226-6422 |
I’m late. No excuses. Let’s go.
So the courts threw out Verizon’s challenge of Net Neutrality, rejecting the very clever argument made by Verizon that it wasn’t premature. So now we wait for the actual publication of Net Neutrality to take place.
Well, to a point. The Republicans aren’t waiting and will vote this week in the full House to repeal Net Neutrality under the Congressional Review Act. Remember: this cannot be filibustered in the Senate, and so when it passes the House we only need 51 votes in the Senate, not 60. Seton Motley has some phone numbers to call if you’re represented by a key Democrat.
Tell ’em that even FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, as part of the 2/5 of the FCC that voted against Net Neutrality, still thinks it was a bad idea. Ask them his question: “Nothing is broken on the Internet, so what are we trying to fix?”
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Hello! As is my right, I’m going to start tonight by shamelessly promoting my own piece arguing for the assignment of the D block of wireless spectrum to civil defense and public safety. I keep calling it civil defense because we learned about the need for this after 9/11, and if the actions of the first responders after those attacks wasn’t wartime civil defense, I don’t know what is.
I know some (but certainly not all) libertarian-leaning Republicans oppose this plan, despite or even because the 9/11 commission chairmen have come out for it. But I’m of the view that there are legitimate government roles in society, and that not all things must be (or even should be) sold or given off to the private sector. Civil defense is one of those that is perfectly fine in government hands.
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Remember the Digital TV transition? That was when we took advantage of improved technology by making all the broadcast TV stations give up their old, huge blocks of wireless spectrum, in exchange for receiving new, narrower blocks. By making the switch, we made room for new wireless technologies to bloom.
That room was split into 5 “blocks.” The C block, for example, was auctioned off to Verizon, who’s using it for 4G LTE wireless Internet. The B block has been bought up heavily by AT&T for the same use. However the D block went unsold. When it went up for auction, nobody even met the reserve price, so today the D block remains available.
After 9/11, we learned that we need to make more spectrum available to first responders. The D block would work great for that purpose. So why don’t we just hand out the D block to first responders across the country? You’d think that’d be obvious, but unfortunately some Republicans are hesitant.
Instead of just showing leadership and doing what we need to do for honest-to-goodness civil defense, we’re playing with cargo cult markets.
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Remember when I seemed to write about Net Neutrality four times a week, which was really something when I was only posting three times? Well, the AT&T/T-Mobile deal is probably going to get that much discussion for now.
Of course there’s nothing new yet. Discussion is all there is until government actually starts acting. My job is to find the interesting discussion, I suppose. So let’s start with Douglas Holtz-Eakin at NRO, who makes very well the key thing we all must remember when it comes to the wireless market: size isn’t what matters. Competition matters. And as I’ve been saying from the start, taking the sick man in T-Mobile and combining him with the #2 firm only helps competition by putting pressure on the high-flying, LTE-deploying #1 Verizon.
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