FCC’s Martin spouts Telecomm Rhetoric
BroadCasting & Cable reported today that the courts upheld the FCC’s reclassification of Broadband Access as an “information service” which resulted in the FCC giving the Telecomms the right to discriminate against wholesale purchasers of broadband access. A petition challenging that authority that had been filed by independent ISPs and cable-modem providers including EarthLink, ISP association Comptel and Time Warner Telecom.
What I found most interesting in this section was the quote from Martin:
“We conclude that the Wireline Broadband Order was based on a permissible interpretation of the Communications Act and a proper exercise of agency discretion,” the court said. “Accordingly, we will deny the petition for review.”
FCC chairman Kevin Martin, who backed the rule changes, praised the decision.
“I am pleased that the court affirmed the FCC’s decision to remove outdated, decades-old regulations from today’s broadband services,” he said in a statement. “By removing such regulations, the commission encouraged broadband investment and fostered competition. As a result of the commission’s deregulatory policies, broadband adoption has increased and consumers have benefited in the form of lower prices and improved broadband service.”
The Court didn’t affirm anything but the FCC’s ability to rule on this, by the way. It certainly didn’t agree or disagree that the regulations should be removed.
Now, to further dissect what Martin put out here. Martin is essentially saying that Local Loop Unbundling, which is the ONE regulation responsible for competitive internet in most of the other countries who are ROYALLY BEATING OUR BUTT in fiber and broadband deployment, broadband competition, and broadband service bundles and pricing, doesn’t work in the US??? When did we ever get the chance to see if it worked or not? And surely if LLU is the wrong way to go, then the US should be numero uno, shouldn’t we?
Re competition and pricing, I don’t see that that’s happened. Quite the opposite in most markets, though I’m sure Martin can trot out one or two places where people have a choice of more than one or two broadband providers and where pricing is a dollar or two cheaper than it is everywhere else. After all, the FCC is good at finessing the numbers. Just look at how they reported broadband deployment by declaring that any zip code that had ONE broadband connection in the whole zip code is “covered”.
More importantly, these particular lies that just came out of Martin’s Mouth are straight out of the Telecomm Astroturf Handbook.
Geez, and I was just starting to think there might be hope for him since he didn’t weenie out to Verizon on the spectrum auction rules.
Technorati Tags: FCC, Kevin Martin, Local Loop Unbundling, Earthlink, Broadband Competition
