Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler’s schedule got a little busier with the announcement on Sunday that telecommunications giant AT&T has agreed to buy DirecTV, the largest satellite television provider in the U.S., for $48.5 billion.
Wheeler already had a long to-do list. His agency just released arcane but important rules governing an auction of wireless airwaves next year. And, of course, he has already been at the center of a firestorm surrounding a new proposal for regulating broadband providers.
Wheeler is scheduled to appear before the House Energy and Commerce Committee tomorrow morning for a hearing on his controversial plan to allow Internet service providers to provide a broadband “fast lane” into consumers’ homes for a fee. That proposal has drawn massive resistance from the technology sector as well as other areas.
Related: Despite Protests, Internet ‘Fast Lane’ Proposal Gets OK
Wheeler’s broadband proposal passed its initial test in a 3-2 vote by FCC commissioners on May 15, despite widespread concern that the major telecommunications firms are slowly changing the “open Internet” by blocking customers’ connections to content that uses a large amount of bandwidth, or “throttling” certain services, which degrades the end user’s experience.
That concern has only been deepened by the ongoing consolidation of power in the broadband delivery market. Wheeler and other regulators are currently reviewing a bid by Comcast to purchase Time Warner Cable for $45 billion. A combined AT&T and DirecTV could make for a stronger competitor to a bulked-up Comcast, though many analysts have questioned whether buying DirecTV makes strategic sense for the phone and Internet provider.
When Wheeler appears before Congress tomorrow, the Republican members of the panel will likely try to walk a fine line between what they see as the legitimate protection of businesses’ right to charge what the market will bear for particular services and public sentiment that seems to be running strongly in favor of an Internet that continues to be free and open.
Right now, the vast majority of traffic flowing over the Internet is treated equally. Data requested from Facebook and data requested from Yahoo, for instance, receive the same priority. That’s the concept of “net neutrality” – the network has no bias for one kind of content over another. ISPs do offer consumers various levels of service, and charge users for more for faster download speeds, but generally, those users can expect to receive whatever content they want at the speed they have paid for.
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ISPs have long wanted to be able to charge content providers such as Netflix, which delivers bandwidth-swallowing streaming video, an extra fee for the use of their systems. This has raised objections from consumer advocates, who argue that users ought to be able to use the bandwidth they’ve paid for to view any content they like. Tech firms and investors have argued that setting up “tolls” for content providers would discriminate against small businesses and start-ups, which could not afford the fees as easily as their larger competitors.
Prior to Wheeler’s proposal that would allow the creation of “fast lanes,” the FCC tried on two different occasions to enforce rules that would make strict network neutrality a requirement for ISPs. Both rules were struck down in court.
Some critics have blasted Wheeler for trying to enforce net neutrality without using the FCC’s authority under Title II of the Communications Act to designate broadband service providers as “common carriers.” This would classify broadband providers as being similar to public utilities, making them subject to more regulation.
Related: Protest for Net Neutrality Goes Wide as FCC Wavers
ISPs, unsurprisingly, are virulently against the common carrier designation.
On Tuesday, Wheeler won’t be looking up at a committee chair who feels that he has done too little to preserve net neutrality, but one who feels he has done too much. Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), chair of the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology has called the FCC’s net neutrality proposals “ill-advised.”
A memo sent to members of the subcommittee by Walden’s staff noted that “two previous FCC attempts to impose net neutrality were struck down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.” The new proposal, it continued, “offers new justifications for the Commission’s desire to impose regulations on the Internet. Of particular concern is the Commission’s willingness to consider regulating the Internet under Title II of the Communications Act – rules that find their roots in 19th century railroad regulation and were designed to regulate the world of a telephone monopoly.”
Related: 100 Groups Say FCC Proposal Is Discriminatory
It concluded, “The practical consequences of reclassification are to give the FCC the authority to second-guess business decisions and to regulate the Internet.”
Of course, proponents of net neutrality would respond that, yes, that’s pretty much exactly what they want the FCC to do.
And while most of the attention will be on Wheeler tomorrow, Walden will face his share of scrutiny, too. For all his effort to project a public image that casts him as a protector of business interests against overreaching regulators, he has faced criticism from the press in his home state, where reporters have openly wondered whether he is simply another lawmaker in the pocket of an industry he’s supposed to be overseeing.
Walden, they pointed out, has accepted more in campaign contributions from the cable industry than any other member of Congress – a total of $109,250 over the past two years alone.
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