re FCC can define markets with only one ISP as "competitive," court rules

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Brett Glass <brett () lariat net>
> Date: September 1, 2018 at 10:09:51 PM EDT
> To: dave () farber net
> Subject: Re: [IP] FCC can define markets with only one ISP as "competitive," court rules
>
> Dave, and everyone:
>
> The FCC's biggest problem, when it comes to broadband, is in fact the opposite: defining markets with multiple ISPs 
> as lacking competitors. Or even counting areas that are well served as unserved.
>
> The FCC recently closed its "CAF II" reverse auctions, in which it offered billions of taxpayer dollars to ISPs 
> willing to provide "unserved" areas with broadband. Which sounds good... until one learns that its regulations do not 
> consider any ISP which is not a telephone company to be an ISP, and therefore the areas that they cover not to be 
> served. (Never mind that there are hundreds of "over the top" VoIP services, including Vonage, Magic Jack, and Ooma, 
> to choose from - all of which are accessible from even the slowest broadband connection, and that the majority of 
> telephone users are cutting the cord and going mobile.) What's more, the list of "unserved" areas which were 
> auctioned was based on data that was more than a year old - an eternity in Internet time - and there's no provision 
> in the FCC's rules to challenge the handouts on the grounds that an area has been provided with service in the 
> meantime. (My ISP rolled out service to several areas which did not have it before just this summer.)
>
> All of these problems are the result of arbitrary decisions made within the FCC bureaucracy, which has ignored 
> petitions to fix them.
>
> As a result, millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars - extracted from citizens via record high surcharges on their 
> telephone bills - are going to waste as the FCC picks winners (telephone companies) and losers (everyone else) and 
> misdirects money to areas where it need not be spent. Worse still, the money is going not to the most competitive 
> providers but rather to those who are able to jump through the necessary hoops (securing bank letters of credit, 
> undergoing expensive financial audits, becoming a telephone company merely for the purpose of receiving the money) to 
> cash in on the FCC's gravy train.
>
> The time to subject the disbursement of the money that stands to be wasted to annual reviews and challenges, and to 
> eliminate the Commission's absurd preference for ISPs which are telephone providers when the law clearly allows it to 
> declare over-the-top VoIP as functionally equivalent, is growing short. Let's hope that the FCC wakes up - or that 
> Congress prods it to do so - before huge amounts of taxpayer money are wasted.
>
> --Brett Glass



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