THIS IS THE TRAITOR THAT IS DOING IT – ONE OF THE COMMITTEE OF 300 AKA ILLUMINATI Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) – ASK HIM POLITELY, WHAT THE F_CK DO YOU THINK YOUR TRYING TO DO BY BASTARDIZING THE CONSTITUTION?I’D LIKE TO BUY A VOWEL PLEASE!THE U.S. IS BEING ATTACKED FROM THE INSIDE BY PEOPLE LIKE ROCKEFELLERIT WAS THE BLOOD OF OUR ANCESTORS AND THE CONSTITUTION THAT ALLOWED HIS FAMILY TO MAKE MONEY BUILDING THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY – NOW THAT HE HAS SECURED HIS MONEY, HE TURNS UPON THE HAND THAT FED HIM!HEY ROCKY – YOU CANNOT ABRIDGE THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH!
Statements of Ryan Radia and Wayne Crews
Washington, D.C., June 17, 2010 – Reactions by Competitive Enterprise Institute telecom policy analysts Ryan Radia and Wayne Crews on the Federal Communications Commission‘s Notice of Inquiry on broadband regulatory classification:
The Notice of Inquiry launched today by the FCC will take America’s broadband market down a dangerous path that threatens competition, innovation, and consumer protection.
Congress has never permitted the FCC to mandate ‘open’ broadband Internet networks, as the Comcast court reaffirmed. In fact, many members of Congress have explicitly called on the FCC not to apply telecommunications service regulation to the broadband sector. Yet instead of heeding the call of Congress, the sole source of the FCC’s authority, the Commission is attempting to grasp unnecessary and destructive regulatory powers by offering legally dubious proposals to reclassify Internet service providers.
America’s telecommunications landscape wilted for much of the 20th century under the FCC’s public utility-style regulation – precisely the type of regulation the Commission now wishes to perpetuate in the broadband sector. To the extent that there is insufficient broadband competition in the United States, price controls and other federal mandates are to blame. Broadband users need less government, not more.
Broadband networks and, more importantly, networks that have yet to be created all hold enormous promise for America’s economic future. It’s not a coincidence that America’s most vibrant communications platform, the Internet, has evolved largely free from regulatory intervention. As today’s proceeding reminds us, the greatest obstacle to the evolution of communications wealth is the FCC itself.
U.S. communications is at an important inflection point. As today’s proceeding indicated, our national communications laws are woefully outdated. These laws hinder broadband competition and are responsible for legal distinctions at odds with market developments.Net neutrality is the perverse policy that infrastructure companies should not control content, but that content companies, in conjunction with the FCC, should control infrastructure. So at the outset, today’s proposal to arbitrarily classify frontier communications technologies into self-serving government silos is backward, destructive and offensive – and, worse, it sets the stage for future political predation against today’s temporary victors. It is the duty of Congress now to rein in the FCC’s inability to acknowledge when it needs to step aside and recognize it is not an elected lawmaker.
Communications policy must acknowledge that competition between technologies is a key ingredient not just for competition, but for promoting a national broadband policy. The best way to achieve these objectives is through a series of deregulatory legislative initiatives. Communications regulation deserves more than a mere “update” – largely, it must be phased out.The removal of government regulation – deregulation – does not mean that the industry is unregulated. Competition, or even the threat of competition, regulates the behaviors of companies in efficient and consumer-enhancing ways. In communications, competition exists among an increasing number of platforms.
Congress must consider these broad market developments and act in tailored ways that change communications law and reform the agency that administers it. A next generation communications policy must distinguish economic regulation from social welfare initiatives. Congress should eliminate rules that regulate market performance and focus on ways to implement social policy – such as universal service – in ways that do not require FCC oversight. Finally, Congress should restructure the FCC and provide a legislative mandate to increase the market’s role in managing spectrum rights.
>>For more on broadband regulation and network neutrality, see comments to the FCC by Wayne Crews in the Matter of Preserving the Open Internet Broadband Industry Practices
CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public interest group that studies the intersection of regulation, risk, and markets. For more about CEI, visit www.cei.org.
Contacts:
Richard Morrison, 202-331-2273
Christine Hall, 202-331-2258
Political Vel Craft 