Good evening. Darrell Issa is stepping up the pressure on the FCC. He wants to tie spectrum reallocation incentives to Net Neutrality repeal. Many of us want to be able to reallocate spectrum from television stations to multipurpose wireless data, since we as a society are demanding more and faster data these days. If Darrell Issa makes the FCC’s ability to facilitate that, contingent on Net Neutrality repeal, then we’re playing a game of chicken. Issa: “Until net neutrality is rolled back, I don’t believe Congress is going to be willing to give the FCC any new power.”
It’s a fair position, and I’m ready to back him.
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So, read any good Tech posts lately? OK, I couldn’t think of a better way than that tonight to introduce a pair of RedState posts on the top story of the moment: AT&T’s announced plans to acquire T-Mobile USA from the Germans. It seems that there are two major conservative perspectives on this deal.
One was described by LaborUnionReport on Sunday: if the non-union T-Mobile workforce is forced under the unionized AT&T umbrella, then the CWA and the AFL-CIO literally profit. And sure enough, the AFL-CIO has now come out in favor of the deal, even though much of the radical left is going to oppose it. I’ve mocked the CWA in this space for backing Net Neutrality over the interests of its members, but apparently blocking this merger would be a bridge too far, because blocking the merger would be against the interests of the union bosses.
However I disagree with blocking the merger regardless of the union issue. If we want to fight forced unionization, let’s pass Right to Work laws and reform the NLRB. Let’s not stop a merger that should improve the wireless service options and quality available to Americans, effectively increasing competition by merging two tech laggards together.
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In the fast-paced, highly-competitive market of wireless phone and Internet access, this announcement stands out. The wireless carrier with the second-most subscribers, AT&T, is to acquire the number four carrier, T-Mobile USA. Some would say that this is a grave threat to competitiveness, risks reducing competition and increasing prices on everyone, and so should be stopped by the benevolent masters of the Obama administration. I disagree.
This is a young and vibrant market, with many competitors already out there, and more yet to come. The acquisition of a lagging company by the #2 company only puts pressure on the #1 firm, Verizon Wireless. Not only that, but existing regulations are plenty strong, and will almost surely result in resources being made available to lesser firms, reshaping the market without reducing choice.
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Long week on my end, but thankfully it’s over as soon as I’m done writing this. But the top story is danger at the FCC. The regulator is still threatening to overstep its bounds and circumvent the Telecommunications Act, which strictly limits the amount of power the FCC has over Information Services. So now they want to redefine high-speed Internet access as something new and different they’re calling BIAS, and then regulate the daylights out of it. This is bad stuff and must be watched. Read the whole article if you’d like to know more.
I am so glad DC Republicans are so strong on the problem’s surrounding Obama administration’s regulatory excesses and the talk is moving to full-on regulatory reform.
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As I began work on tonight’s late Tech at Night, reports came out of an explosion at a nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture, Japan. As Japan continues to deal with an unimaginably strong earthquake and then a devastating tsunami caused by that quake, I hope nobody takes those special circumstances and tries to argue against clean, effective power generation technology in the general case. Let them bury the dead first, clean up, and examine the causes of the problems before we then pause and make intelligent decisions.
Though as much as the earthquake causes me to woolgather about my own earthquake history, life does continue to go on here in America. And in fact, Republicans are getting so aggressive on tech policy issues. Mike Lee in particular has gotten much attention for calling for antitrust hearings against Google in the course of greater Senate committee efforts toward possible Search Neutrality laws. In fact I suspect he’d get even more if not for the Sendai earthquake.
I’m sure it’s infuriating the daylights out of the radicals that one of America’s most prominent TEA Party Senators is in favor of strong government action here, and I don’t know if I agree with it myself, but if Microsoft was vulnerable to years of government harassment despite the fact that anyone, at any time, could easily acquire high-quality competing products, so will Google be despite the existence of major search competitors.
Though if Senator Lee is making this move because of the juicy political effects, more than an actual desire to be a trustbuster, then his move gets two thumbs up from this observer. Ditto Joe Barton’s rumblings of going after Google for the children and their privacy.
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I don’t want to go the full Jim Anchower on you all, but the end of the week has been a bit rough on my end. My Internet connection is going full on Neutral on me, by which I mean it’s been going offline as much as it’s online, including a big 8 hours of full downtime at one point. If it weren’t for my new iPhone 4 I’d be even worse off.
Maybe I should be like Netflix, who continues to ride the Net Neutrality fad to get its own subsidies. Yes, Netflix now wants all of us, everyone who pays for Internet access at home, to subsidize Netflix users. Hey, that’s good for me, since I’m a subscriber and even dropped to Internet-only as soon as it was available, but I wouldn’t feel right supporting it.
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There are two big tech stories swirling around the Internet that some people are lumping together incorrectly. One is the old story that Apple refuses to ship Adobe Flash players on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, all of which run iOS. The other is that Google now refuses to ship support for the h.264 video format in the Chrome web browser.
Some say these two moves are the same, but there is a difference. Apple is refusing to integrate a product into its software, while Google is attempting to create its own standard in defiance of what is widely used and deployed on the Internet today.
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Now that the FCC has made itself the center of attention by planning a big power grab online, it may be the case that the FCC gets some unwanted attention. The Free State Foundation is calling out the FCC for not being very open even as the FCC is calling for an Open Internet™. Here’s the punchline, but read the whole thing, and that’s not something I say often in this space:
But preserving the Open FCC is much more fundamentally important to the public, over the short, medium, and long term. I have my doubts concerning how the FCC’s dumping of 1900 pages of documents into the public record on the eve of the date it cuts off public participation is consistent with preserving an Open FCC.
The last time I saw a data dump this bad was when Saddam Hussein was toying with the UN Security Council. That’s just great company for Julius Genachowski, FCC Chairman, to have put himself in.
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Happy Weekend. As I write this it’s already the 11th, so you have two shopping weeks left before Christmas. Oops, is it still legal on the Internet not to say Holiday?
Some quick hits for the weekend as we continue to wait on the FCC to explain itself and its plans for radical new Internet regulation.
George Ou points out that if Netflix gets to demand free peering with Comcast, then Netflix ought to demand free shipping over the postal service. After all, if neutral means free, then that’s the next step, right? Just shows how absurd the radicals really are in all of this. Network investment costs money and that money must be recouped with profit, or else that investment isn’t going to happen.
And again, if that investment stops happening, we all lose out.
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Oh boy, I’m tired tonight. It would be so tempting to give Tech at Night a pass tonight but I have clothes in the dryer anyway, so let’s go.
Let’s talk about Net Neutrality. In fact, let’s talk about who’s funding the voices supporting Net Neutrality. Bob Parks of Black and Right and posting right here at RedState did some digging and found that CREDO Mobile is funding some Net Neutrality advocates. And the Net Neuties claim they have no Evil Corporate Interests™ behind them. Never let them forget that the FCC acting on this issue is the FCC choosing to favor one set of corporations over another. And the losers are those that invest in the Internet… and we all know what happens when we punish investment in the internet: we get less of it in the future.
That’s why we’ve got to minimize the damage done by the FCC this month. We need a light, light, light touch if we have to have regulation at all.
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