FCC Wants to Give Corporations Their Own Internet

And now the rights of corporate ownership officially supercede those of individual citizens. this isn't new, but the courts and the bureaucracy are going ahead and getting the big govt sellout locked in so we won't be able to repeal these inane conflicts of interest for a very long time or without extreme difficulty. Fuck corporate rule! Corporations aren't people. They should be dismantled every 20 years with the remaining holdings distributed among their workers, who may then apply for a brand new corporate charter, starting over from scratch every 20 years. It would help to prohibit the ridiculous amount of control a few corporate CEOs  and their executive boards have over our joke of a political process. Lobbying needs to be redefined with stricter limits, as well. And when you are interviewing for jobs in the public and private sector, you need to choose which one you'll stay in for 7 years. No more of this revolving door between regulating agencies and the industries/companies they regulate. It's all a huge shitsoaked conflict of interest that has destroyed a whole generation of workers, at least, and cannot provide any kind of future for the next generations of US citizens. The oligarchy must be destroyed by any means possible. Corporate leadership is far from patriotic: they hold the bulk of their fortunes in tax haven banks overseas to keep from paying taxes, drastically undercutting the federal budget during a crucial period in a failing economy 6 years deep in a "small d" depression, AND these traitors get to dictate policy and handpick their own candidates to do their bidding while holding office? Bullshit! Hang them all high! They betray everything sacred about this country and her consitution, all to make themselves richer at the expense of the nation and her people.

EAT THE RICH! and pile their bones up so high they reach the moon.--jef

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The New Proposal Mocks Net Neutrality
by ALFREDO LOPEZ


When a federal court trashed its “net neutrality” compromise policy in January, the Federal Communications Commission assured us that the Internet we knew and depended on was safe. Most activists didn’t believe federal officials and this past week the FCC demonstrated how realistic our cynicism was.

The Commission announced last week that among its proposals on the Internet, due for full discussion on May 15, was one which would give access providers the right to sign special deals with content producers for connections that are faster and cleaner than the connections most websites use. It’s precisely the nightmare that court decision threatened.

In the predictable outcry and immediate debate over the FCC’s announcement, however, two major issues seemed to be lost.

To deliver this faster connection, the Internet giants will have to change the Net’s protocols, establishing a fast lane that completely destroys the technological basis of Internet neutrality. They will, effectively, be allowed to set up an alternate Internet.
At the same time, the announcements raise a question about the FCC’s role. To develop this proposal, it has obviously been talking to the very companies it is supposed to regulate and has written regulations based primarily on a concern about their ability to make lots of money.

Isn’t this the opposite of what federal regulation is supposed to do?

When the debate dust settles, it appears that not only may we lose the Internet as we know but we have no agency in government looking out for our interests.

The background has been covered on this website but, to recap:

Access (or service) providers offer connections to put you on the Internet and give you several speeds to choose from. They are mainly cable companies like Comcast and telecommunications companies like Verizon. Content providers use those connections to deliver what you want to see and read. Every website owner is a content provider, including biggies like Netflix.

Net Neutrality is the principle that service providers — like Verizon and Comcast — can’t discriminate in the delivery of content or provision of access based on user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication. If you go on-line, you can reach everything anyone else can. It was the law until this past January.

That was when a federal court struck down the provision finding that cable companies like Comcast weren’t subject to the neutrality rules that govern telephone companies and so net neutrality, based on the telecom industry’s practices, didn’t apply to high-speed providers. They are, after all, cable companies and anyone who subscribes to cable television with its multiple “programming packages” that give you a monthly dose of sticker shock knows there’s nothing “neutral” about cable.

In short, service provider companies can now charge content providers money to speed up their content delivery and the content providers can limit access to that faster content to people paying a higher price for it.

While the decision was based on cable company practice, it obviously benefits telecoms like Verizon who also offer high-speed service.

Apparently, the FCC wasn’t too unhappy either. Chairman Tom Wheeler (a former telecom industry lobbyist) reacted in stunningly triumphant terms, assuring us all that our access to the Internet will be completely protected. In fact, he said the ruling actually gives the FCC more regulatory power. This new proposal, carving out a slice of the Internet for rich corporations to operate more quickly and cleanly, was apparently what he meant.

In his defense of the current FCC plan, Wheeler explains that we would all still have access to everything on the Internet. The proposal, he explains, “will restore the concepts of net neutrality consistent with the court’s ruling in January.” But that January ruling threw Net Neutrality out the window and it’s clear that with this new proposal our access to certain content will be slower, more prone to start and stop “buffering” and less crisp than the faster connection unless we pay more for it.

It’s like the locksmith assuring us that our broken door lock will remain broken.

If that spasm of regulatory double-speak doesn’t provoke a groan, the argument by decision defenders will: they say that, while the companies will pay for the faster connection, no access provider will charge the consumer more for it.

But the content provider will. Obviously an outfit like Netflix is not going to offer this higher speed service that it is paying the access providers handsomely for to customers without charging them more for it. In fact, if past practice is any indication, even those of us who don’t or can’t pay for faster internet service we will all see our fees for watching this kind of on-line content rise, whether we’re watching it on the faster connection or not. Netflix pays Comcast more and charges the pass-along costs (with some profit mixed in): just the kind of hustle Net Neutrality was invented to prevent.

If the proposal is approved, as is expected, Net Neutrality will be buried. But the true threat to the Internet’s existence isn’t only the “pay for speed” proposal. To make this happen, providing companies will have to restructure their technology to allow for a faster “lane” on the Internet. There already are, of course, various speeds of “high-speed” service and that is maintained by the company’s determining which connecting server the customer is going to access. When you enter the Internet you are immediately connected to a server that handles outgoing and incoming traffic at a specific speed. If you pay for higher speeds, you get the higher-speed systems with their servers.

All of this, however, has up to now been handled at the user or customer level. The Internet itself remains the same. What the FCC is proposing is a new way of regulating speed. Now it is the content provider who is assigned a specific speed lane and any user who pays can access that high-speed content. To make this possible, the access provider will have to establish not a higher speed connection server but a completely separate connection to the Internet. This isn’t a faster lane on the highway; it’s a completely separate highway.

With that “alternate Internet” established, and with a small empire of developers continuously improving it, the power of providers to control all Internet content is now in place. They can start with Netflix, but they legally have power to channel any Internet content over that super-highway, leaving most content providers in the dust. That will certain include most websites your visit, including this one. As speed over the Internet improves with new technological development, guess where most of the development investment is going? As new streaming technology improves, content developers will have to pay to take advantage of it and most of us just don’t have that kind of money.

The impact is also international because the Internet has no national boundaries and the rules governing any U.S. based company apply to all its activities world-wide unless the government of a specific country objects. That objection will rarely happen because most governments won’t care or will take a pay-off (in the form of a tax payment or licensing fee) to shut up. In fact, governments all over the world can now treat this as another form of revenue.

This kind of corporate control over the Internet and our communications is frightening and control is what the corporations are seeking. It’s been the goal of every major company to control as much access as they can, growing their “user-base” and profits in the process. In fact, the prospect of a wide open internet has now attracted a couple of “data giants”: Google and Facebook. Each company is now developing technology to provide access to everyone on earth using signal bouncing balloons (in Google’s case) and drones and satellites (in Facebook’s). While both companies protest that their intentions are altruistic (providing Internet to all humans), the timing of their plans in light of this decision seem like the good old pursuit of profit.

Rhe main question isn’t whether these people will try to do this because that’s answered by their history: Of course they will. The question then is: What is the FCC doing about it?

This week, coalitions of Internet freedom activists were making plans to make their presentations before the FCC and to lobby Congress and to do letter-writing campaigns to just about any concerned person in government. All of this has proven to be important and useful work and it has ended in some successes in the past.

But why should any of us have to do this? Isn’t the very role of the FCC to protect and represent the public? While neo-con steroids that have been driving it for the last two decades, the FCC’s legal responsibilities remain the same: not to protect the interests of corporations but to protect our interests against corporations.

Clearly, with a proposal that represents corporate interests, the FCC isn’t doing any such thing. Some of us aren’t surprised; none of us should be.

Is This the End of Net Neutrality?

Privatizing the Public Good
by DAVID ROSEN


On Tuesday, Jan. 14th, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Open Internet Order. In its decision, the Court found that the FCC lacked the authority to implement and enforce the order it put forth in 2011.

The FCC’s order was intended to prevent broadband Internet service providers (ISPs) from blocking or interfering with data traffic on the web. This policy – if significantly watered down — is in keeping with the both the open access traditional of U.S. communications services since the 1930s and the spirit of the Internet since its inception three decades ago.

Verizon challenged the FCC’s authority to regulate digital communications. Historically, ISPs must treat all data equally and are barred from slowing down or blocking websites. Verizon claimed that FCC regulatory practice violates its 1st Amendment right to edit, prioritize or block its customers’ access to the Internet. Ironically, the Court’s decision comes after a 2010 ruling that the FCC could not stop Comcast from blocking BitTorrent’s video sharing program.

The Court found that the FCC, having deceptively reclassified the Internet as a “information” services, could not impose the same obligations as traditional “common carrier” telecom services like old-fashion “pots” (plain-old-telephone). Judge David Tatel wrote, “Given that the Commission has chosen to classify broadband providers in a manner that exempts them from treatment as common carriers, the Communications Act expressly prohibits the commission from nonetheless regulating them as such.”

The FCC’s effort to reclassify the Internet as an “information” services was part of Bush-era policy to privatize online services. Pres. Obama’s former FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski — in the face of considerable public, activists and high-tech corporate pressure — tried to “square the circle” and maintain net neutrality while classifying the Internet as an information service. The Court’s decision is a rejection this legal fiction.

Over the last decade-plus, there’s been an increasingly close relationship between the FCC and its corporate clients – to the detriment of the public good. This was most graphically displayed in 2011 when Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker, shortly following her approval of Comcast’s acquisition of NBC Universal, took a well-paying position with the cable giant.

Similar revolving doors are evident in the career paths of some recent chairmen. Kevin Martin, a Bush-II appointee, is now with Patton Boggs, a leading Washington, DC, law firm and lobbyist. Michael Powell, Gen. Powell’s son and appointed by Clinton, now heads the cable industry trade association, NCTA. William Kennard, also appointed by Clinton, previously an executive with the banking firm, Carlyle Group, where he specialized telecommunications and media in investments; he now serves as the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union. And Genachowski took a position at the Carlyle Group.

In November 2013, Obama replaced Genachowski with Tom Wheeler, a true industry insider, long a water carrier for corporate interests. He served as head of the NCTA from 1979 and 1984, and ran the Cellular Telecom and Internet Association (CTIA) from 1992 through 2004. Most recently, was a managing director at Core Capital Partners, a venture-capital firm, and a longtime Obama fundraiser.

Wheeler is likely to continue the FCC’s pro big-telecom policies. Nevertheless, a few days before the Court’s ruling, he came out with a strong endorsement of net neutrality. “Public policy should protect the great driving force of the open Internet: how it allows innovation without permission,” he said. “This is why it is essential that the FCC continue to maintain an open Internet and maintain the legal ability to intervene promptly and effectively in the event of aggravated circumstances.”

However, in 2009, he took a more compromised position:

Rules that recognize the unique characteristics of a spectrum-based service and allow for reasonable network management would seem to be more important than the philosophical debate over whether there should be rules at all. … The wireless industry’s initial reaction to net neutrality was to question its need and warn of “unintended consequences.” Accepting the inevitability of the concept, however, and working to maximize its positive effects – from appropriate network management, to flexible pricing and even new spectrum – could be the opportunity for a big win.

Say goodbye to net neutrality.

Verizon’s challenge to the FCC’s Internet order is only one element of a multi-faceted campaign to further privatize U.S. telecommunication services. A second front is being pushed by AT&T and involves proposed Congressional legislation that would essentially end all regulatory obligations. It insisted, “AT&T believes that this [traditional] regulatory experiment will show that conventional public-utility-style regulation is no longer necessary or appropriate in the emerging all-IP ecosystem.”

A third front is taking place outside the Washington beltway. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has been effectively promoting “model legislation” ending traditional telephone company accountability requirements. Such legislation has been adopted by at least 23 states. This legislation removed ”carrier of last resort” requirements, thus telecoms no longer have to serve small rural communities.

Two decades ago, the telecom companies – phone and cable — promised to build Al Gore’s “Information Superhighway.” To incentivize these private conglomerates, the industry were deregulated, permitting increased pricing, decreased service requirements and nearly no public accountability. Since then, they’ve pocketed an estimated $350 billion to build a post-modern digital telecom system. What do we have today? A 2nd-rate communications system! Further deregulations – especially the killing of net neutrality – will only make things worse.

Last year, many within the broad tech, Internet and media communities organized to halt the Hollywood studios and record companies from pushing new “anti-piracy” laws through Congress. The battle against SOPA-PIPA is a model campaign for the next battle against Verizon, AT&T and ALEC to preserve net neutrality and an open Internet.

SCOTUS Rules on Mandatory Minimum Sentencing for Crack and Nudity & Profanity Fines Meted by FCC

Older convictions subject to new crack sentencing guidelines
By Stephen C. Webster - RAW Story
Thursday, June 21, 2012

In a 5-4 decision (PDF) on Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that reduced sentences for crack cocaine, approved by Congress in 2010, must be applied to individuals with pending legal cases at the time of its passage if they had not yet been sentenced.

The nation’s top judges took up the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA) after two Chicago men were given mandatory minimum sentences as required by Congress in the 1980s, when a crack “epidemic” was sweeping the nation. Then, Congress set the sentence for simple possession of a single gram of crack to a minimum of five years, whereas someone found with less than 100 grams of powder cocaine wouldn’t face nearly the same sentence.

Due to the popularity of crack in low-income, urban communities, the harsh sentencing laws saw a wildly inordinate number of African-Americans jailed for much longer than white offenders caught with the more expensive powder cocaine. Crack and cocaine are the same drug in different forms, but crack is thought to be more addictive because it is commonly smoked, rather than snorted, producing a stronger and faster high.

Congress finally recognized this disparity and passed the FSA with bipartisan support in August 2010. The new law adjusted the sentencing rules to bring crack and cocaine penalties in line with each other, setting a mandatory minimum sentence of five years at 28 grams of crack, instead of one.

Just one month after that measure was signed into law, the two Chicago men — Corey Hill and Edward Dorsey — were both given mandatory minimum sentences in line with the Reagan-era penalties. Judges on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with those sentences, too, noting that the men had both committed their crimes before the FSA was signed by President Barack Obama, and because it was not clear whether the FSA should be applied to cases pending at that time.

The Supreme Court reversed that decision on Thursday, however, after Justice Anthony Kennedy sided with Sotomayor, Kagan, Breyer and Ginsburg to overcome the conservative justices in a split decision.

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Supreme Court overrules FCC on TV swearing ban 
By Arturo Garcia - RAW Story
Thursday, June 21, 2012

So it turns out you can curse on television – sort of.

According to MSNBC, a ruling by the Supreme Court Thursday waived fines and sanctions against ABC and Fox, saying the Federal Communications Commission did not give them fair notice before punishing them over brief instances of curse words and nudity.

The ruling (PDF), which does not affect the FCC’s overall policy toward profanity, centered on outbursts by Cher and Nicole Richie on live awards shows on FOX and a brief instance of partial nudity shown on ABC’s NYPD Blue.

“Because the Commission failed to give Fox or ABC fair notice prior to the broadcasts in question that fleeting expletives and momentary nudity could be found actionably indecent, the Commission’s standards as applied to these broadcasts were vague,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the unanimous decision, adding that the FCC was free to revise its current policy “in light of its determination of the public interest and applicable legal requirements.”

Meet the Media Companies Lobbying Against Transparency

Friday, April 20, 2012 by ProPublica

by Justin Elliott, ProPublica 

 

News organizations cultivate a reputation for demanding transparency, whether by suing for access to government documents, dispatching camera crews to the doorsteps of recalcitrant politicians, or editorializing in favor of open government.

But now many of the country's biggest media companies — which own dozens of newspapers and TV news operations — are flexing their muscle in Washington in a fight against a government initiative to increase transparency of political spending.

The corporate owners or sister companies of some of the biggest names in journalism — NBC News, ABC News, Fox News, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Politico, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and dozens of local TV news outlets — are lobbying against a Federal Communications Commission measure to require broadcasters to post political ad data on the Internet.

As we have recently detailed, political ad data is public by law but is not widely accessible because it is currently kept only in paper files at individual stations. The FCC has proposed fixing that by requiring broadcasters to post on the Internet details of political ad purchases including the identity of the buyer and the price.

(ProPublica has been inviting readers and other journalists to send in the files to be posted as part of our Free the Files project.)

Over the past few months, several major media companies have dispatched top executives or outside lobbyists to the FCC to oppose the proposed rule or to push a watered down version, disclosure filings show. (The FCC is voting on the issue April 27.)

In a speech this week at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski excoriated the broadcasters as working "against transparency and against journalism."

The industry's opposition to the transparency proposal has sometimes been heated. In filings submitted to the FCC in January and March, Allbritton Senior Vice President Jerald Fritz raised the specter of "'Soviet-style' standardization" of ad sales if political ad files are required to be put online in a single format.

In a February meeting with the FCC, Walt Disney executives complained about the "logistics and burden" of putting the political ad information online.

That same month, executives from Disney along with NBC and News Corp argued in a meeting with FCC officials that posting the political ad file would allow "competitors in the market and commercial advertisers [to] anonymously glean highly sensitive pricing data."

Television stations must by law must offer political candidates the lowest rates on ads. Broadcasters have argued that by making this information available online and not just at stations, it would hurt their ability to negotiate with other advertisers.

Advocates for the online disclosure rule have countered that the political ad information is already public by law and the measure would simply make the existing disclosure rules relevant for the Internet age. They have also pointed out that keeping paper files in electronic form should actually be more efficient for stations.

Albritton, NBC, and Walt Disney did not respond to requests for comment on the FCC chairman's charge that they have positioned themselves "against transparency and against journalism." News Corp. declined to comment.

Some media companies have also pushed a watered down proposal to post only some of the public political ad data, and to put it up on individual station websites instead of on a central FCC website.
Washington lawyers representing the other companies fighting the rule — Barrington Broadcasting, Belo, Cox, Dispatch, E.W. Scripps, Gannett, Hearst, Meredith Broadcasting, Post-Newsweek Stations, Raycom Media, and Schurz Communications — lobbied FCC officials in February, March, and again this week.

The group suggested that instead of putting the full, itemized political ad data online, stations would post aggregate data once a week.

"What we were saying is, if you want the public to be informed about what's being bought at what price, maybe there's a simpler way to do it,"Mary Jo Manning, an attorney representing the group, told ProPublica. "Transparency is giving people information that is useful."

But when the FCC pressed the group for details on its plan, the stations said they opposed posting even the aggregate data in a single format prescribed by the FCC. They also opposed posting the data on a central FCC website, saying they wanted to post the limited data only on the stations' own websites. If enacted, both of those stances would make it more difficult to get and analyze the data.

Since there is a one-week sunshine period ahead of FCC votes, today is the last day that interested parties will be able to lobby the commission before its public meeting April 27.

Among them are:

• News Corporation, which owns the Wall Street Journal and Fox News
• Walt Disney, which owns ABC News and ESPN
• NBCUniversal, which is owned by Comcast and includes NBC News
• Allbritton, which owns several TV stations and Politico
• Gannett Broadcasting, a division of Gannett, which owns USA Today
• Post-Newsweek Stations, the broadcast division of the Washington Post Company
• Belo Corp, which owns 20 TV stations
• Cox Media Group, which owns the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Austin American-Statesman, and other newspapers and TV stations
• Dispatch Broadcast Group, which owns Ohio and Indiana TV stations
• Barrington Broadcasting Co., which owns several television stations around the country
• The E.W. Scripps Company, which owns TV stations and newspapers including the Commercial Appeal in Memphis
• Hearst Television Inc., which owns 29 TV stations
• Raycom Media, which owns TV stations
• Schurz Communications, which owns TV Stations and newspapers around the country

Corruption Is Responsible for 80% of Your Cell Phone Bill

In the case of Big Telecommunications, buying politicians pays off handsomely by killing the competition.
By Matt Stoller, Republic Report
Posted on April 11, 2012

Last year, a new company called Lightsquared promised an innovative business model that would dramatically lower cell phone costs and improve the quality of service, threatening the incumbent phone operators like AT&T and Verizon. Lightsquared used a new technology involving satellites and spectrum, and was a textbook example of how markets can benefit the public through competition. The phone industry swung into motion, not by offering better products and services, but by going to Washington to ensure that its new competitor could be killed by its political friends. And sure enough, through three Congressmen that AT&T and Verizon had funded (Fred Upton (R-MI), Greg Walden (R-OR), and Cliff Stearns (R-FL)), Congress began demanding an investigation into this new company. Pretty soon, the Federal Communications Commission got into the game, revoking a critical waiver that had allowed it to proceed with its business plan.

And so Americans continue to have a small number of expensive, poor quality cell phone providers. And how much does this cost you? Take your phone bill, and cut it by 80%. That’s how much you should be paying. You see, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, people in Sweden, the Netherlands, and Finland pay on average less than $130 a year for cell phone service. 

Americans pay $635.85 a year. That $500 a year difference, from most consumers with a cell phone, goes straight to AT&T and Verizon (and to a much lesser extent Sprint and T-Mobile). It’s the cost of corruption. It’s also, from the perspective of these companies, the return on their campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures. Every penny they spend in DC and in state capitols ensures that you pay high bills, to them.

This isn’t obvious, because much of how they do this has to do with the structure of the industry.

 

Telecommunications isn’t like selling apples, where you have a lot of buyers and sellers. In a business like buying or selling apples, all you need is an apple tree to get into the business. Cell phones aren’t like that. It’s a business where you sell services on top of a network of cell phone towers that can transmit phone calls and data, and these networks cost tens of billions of dollars to build. But even if you have the money to build one, you still might not be able to, as the Lightsquared example shows. These networks all use public airwaves, or “spectrum”, and you need government permission to use it. Remember the electromagnetic spectrum you learned about in school? The government literally leases that out to companies, and they make radios, microphones, wifi routers, and cell phones that use it.

This has implications for your cell phone bill. Once AT&T or Verizon has paid for its network and licensed spectrum from the government, the cost of adding an additional customer is very low. That means that the biggest providers with bigger networks and more licensed spectrum make more money. It’s not only that their costs are lower, but also because they can keep other players out through control of the political system. That is, they can move towards monopoly in the industry. And monopoly means higher prices for you, and more profits for them. Here’s the data.

Verizon and AT&T’s Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) are substantially higher than any other national carrier’s. Verizon’s wireless profit margins (EBITDA) are substantially higher than all other carriers except AT&T. And Verizon and AT&T together control four-fifths of the entire wireless industry profits, the only two major carriers to control double-digit shares of the industry’s total profits. Over the past 3 years Verizon and AT&T’s share of total industry profits has steadily increased while everyone else’s declined.

This of course doesn’t mean that these companies are investing more in their networks, for better service for you and me. In case you haven’t noticed, cell phone coverage is still really bad, and calls drop routinely. The chart below can explain why. The data is from the CTIA, or the Wireless Association, and it shows the effect of industry consolidation.

Basically, what this chart shows is that in the 1990s, cell phone companies bought up other cell phone companies, and Congress and the FCC were happy to go along because of the power of industry lobbying. Once these companies had an effective cartel, their amount of investment dropped. If you didn’t like your cell phone company, you couldn’t really switch, because the other big cell phone company was just as bad. In 1997, the industry was putting 50 cents of every dollar of revenue into investing in more cell phone towers. By 2009, that number dropped 12.5 cents of every dollar. CTIA has made it much harder to find this data since 2004, but it is obscure filing comments at the FCC. Pretty soon, we should expect the public not to even be able to track why our cell phone’s usage is so bad.

To reduce prices in such a system, you need either competition in the form of more networks (with the same or different technology) or price regulation. The Federal Communications Commission has neither forced more competition, nor has it restricted price gouging. In fact, by doing things like killing Lightsquared, it has ensured high prices for all of us. Furthermore, the FCC has allowed a small number of big players like AT&T and Verizon to buy up much of the public airwaves (or “spectrum”) available for cell phone use, just to keep out competitors. It tends to allow big mega-mergers to go through (with the exception of the recent T-Mobile and AT&T merger). Meanwhile, Congress is trying to tie the hands of the FCC on making more spectrum available for anyone to use, and broadcasters are also throwing their lobbying into the ring, because they want to be able to control more spectrum to transmit television signals.

Why does the FCC and why does Congress want us to have high cell phone costs? Well, they don’t, not really. It’s more accurate to say they don’t particularly care about our problems, but are responding to an entirely different problem that is completely unrelated to cell phones. The government is responding to the need for campaign contributions for politicians.

Politicians need huge sums of money to run for office. Just a regular Congressman (and remember, there are 435 of these) needs $2 million on average to win reelection – which is about $20,000 per week he’s in office. He needs this money to buy TV ads. Unlike in other countries, where political parties get free TV time or public money to pay for elections, American politicians get this money from private interests. Some of the biggest donors, in fact the single biggest donor, is AT&T, with Verizon in the top 100. These politicians lobby regulatory agencies like the Federal Communications Commission to make sure these companies can do what they want, and politicians make sure that phone companies get to buy up other phone companies, eventually creating a near monopoly situation. And we all know that monopolies charge more and deliver less to their customers. As telecom legal expert Marvin Ammori said, “It’s proven cheaper to buy politicians than invest in high speed broadband or to provide good customer service at a fair price. ”

In other words, we are stuck with big bad cell phone companies not because those companies are good at providing cell phone service (which anyone with a dropped cell phone call knows), but because they are good at corrupting markets through political donations. AT&T has the single biggest donor group (known as a “Political Action Committee”) in Washington, DC.

Again, that’s on average $500 a year, $40 a month, or $1.50 a day, from you, straight into the pockets of Verizon and AT&T.

Verizon's Cozy Deal With Cable Would Create a Wireless Duopoly

Tuesday, 03 April 2012

By Mike Ludwig, Truthout | Report
Verizon Wireless and America's biggest cable companies want to sell you everything in one package: wireless, broadband, cable TV and a telephone landline. This might sound like an easy option, but consumer groups say that the consolidation deals behind these service bundles could crush competition in the market and raise prices for everyone.

Verizon Wireless plans to purchase $3.6 billion worth of unused wireless spectrum from a joint venture representing the big cable providers Comcast, Time Warner and Bright House Networks. Verizon is also buying $315 million worth of spectrum from the Cox cable company. In a separate deal that anti-trust watchdogs brought to the attention of regulators, Verizon and the four cable companies will also market each others' products under a controversial joint-marketing agreement. Consumers could, for instance, buy a wireless plan from Verizon when purchasing cable Internet from Comcast.

Verizon claims it's trying to boost 4G coverage, meet the growing demand created by smartphone technology and offer customers some one-stop shopping. Opponents of the deal, however, say Verizon already holds the greatest amount of prime mobile broadband spectrum. If the proposed deal goes through, Verizon and its biggest competitor, AT&T, would hold more wireless spectrum nationally than all other providers combined and essentially become a market duopoly, according to Parul Desai of the Consumer Union, which publishes Consumer Reports.

Desai said the whole deal would reduce competition among all the companies involved. Verizon is essentially giving the cable companies control of the landlines and the cable companies are giving Verizon control of the wireless spectrum. Verizon would have little incentive to compete with the cable companies with its FiOS high-speed wired Internet service, and cable companies would have little incentive to compete for wireless service. Time Warner, Cox and Comcast already operate as monopolies in some regions, Desai said, and the deal could leave consumers with little or no choice in landline and broadband providers.

Desai said the cable companies had begun to invest in wireless, which is why the companies have unused spectrum to sell, but once they realized it would be tough to compete with Verizon Wireless and AT&T, they decided to sell out their holdings in exchange for a firmer grip on landlines.

"The wireless side will be dominated by Verizon Wireless, and they'll get out of the landline game, and cable will get out of the wireless game so they can dominate the landline game," Desai said. "... So what happens when you sell the spectrum and it continues to go to the top two players? It makes it easier to squeeze out some of the smaller players."

Two smaller telecommunication firms, Level 3 Communications and MetroPCS, have filed briefs with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) opposing the deal. Desai said the deal isn't just bad for smaller firms; it's also bad for consumers, who will be left with fewer options and could eventually pay higher prices because Verizon and the cable companies will not be competing with one another.

Rural consumers could be especially affected because the companies will have less incentive to expand infrastructure to underserved areas, and by reducing competition, rural consumers could pay higher prices and even lose services, according to Edyael Casaperalta, who works to bring high-speed Internet access to rural areas with the Center for Rural Strategies. Rural residents are often low income, Casaperalta said, and may not be able to afford bundled packages offered under the joint-marketing agreement.

"Knowing that there's a lack of interest in rural customers, there's already less competition for rural customers to be able to get better services and better prices, and this type of transaction will create even less competition, if any at all," Casaperalta said.

The Justice Department and the FCC are currently reviewing the proposed deal, and the FCC must approve the spectrum transfers. In December, just days before Verizon announced its deal with the cable companies, AT&T and T-Mobile abandoned a $39 billion merger andplaced the blame on regulators. AT&T canceled the acquisition, which critics feared would also create a wireless duopoly, after resistance in the FCC and legal challenges spooked investors.

Congress is also weighing in on the Verizon deal. On March 21, the Senate Antitrust Committee held a hearing on the deal titled "The Verizon/Cable Deals: Harmless Collaboration or a Threat to Competition and Consumers?" The hearing featured Comcast and Verizon executives butting heads with consumer advocates.

Verizon Executive Vice President Randal Milch told the committee that Verizon needs more spectrum to respond to the growing demand caused by the "explosive" use of smartphones, tablets, and other data-intensive devices.

"We are only buying spectrum not currently in commercial use in order to put it to use serving customers, and no customer will see fewer choices or increased prices as a result of this transaction," Milch said.

Joel Kelsey of the Free Press, a media policy group, told the committee that it's always dangerous to consumers when media consolidations reduces competition.

"Allowing for further consolidation in this marketplace will only drive prices higher, reduce consumer choice, and have drastic consequences on the rate of innovation as the companies involved are freed from competition and find diminishing value in investing in better infrastructure," Kelsey said.

The proposed deal also raised ire among unions, but instead of outright opposing a deal that labor groups see as a potential job killer, two unions have proposed stipulations to the FCC. The Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers have asked the FCC to only approve the deal if Verizon agrees to continue developing its FiOS Internet service, which they fear could go under if Verizon decides not to compete in the landline market. The unions also asked the FCC to prohibit cross-marketing services in Verizon territory and require that the companies allow customers to buy individual services at bundle prices without buying the whole service bundle.

Let’s Stop Big Media’s (B)AD Behavior

Friday, March 30, 2012 by Common Dreams
by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship


Over the years we’ve been reporting on how power is monopolized by the powerful. How corporate lobbyists, for example, far outnumber members of Congress. And how the politicians are so eager to do the bidding of donors that they allow those lobbyists to dictate the law of the land and make a farce of democracy. What we have is much closer to plutocracy, where the massive concentration of wealth at the top protects and perpetuates itself by controlling the ends and means of politics. This is why so many of us despair over fixing what’s wrong: we elect representatives to change things, and once in office they wind up serving the deep-pocketed donors who put up the money to keep change from happening at all.

Here’s the latest case in point. The airwaves belong to all of us, right? They’re part of “the commons” that in theory no private interest should be able to buy or control. Nonetheless, government long ago allowed television and radio stations to use the airwaves for commercial purposes, and the advertising revenues have made those companies fabulously rich. But part of the deal was that in return for the privilege of reaping a fortune they would respect the public interest in a variety of ways, including covering the local news important to our communities. If they didn’t, they would be denied their license to use the airwaves at all.

Alas, over the years, through one ruse or another, the public has been shafted. We heard the other day of a candidate for office in a Midwest state who complained to the general manager of a TV station that his campaign was not getting any news coverage. “You want coverage?” the broadcaster replied. “Buy some ads and then we’ll talk!”

That pretty well sums up the game. But hold your nose: it gets worse. The media companies and their local stations – including goliaths like CBS and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp – stand to pull in as much as $3 billion this year from political ads. Three billion dollars! And most of that money will pay for airing ugly, toxic negative ads that use special effects, snide jokes and flat out deception to take us to the lowest common denominator of politics.

The FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, which is supposed to make sure the broadcasters don’t completely get away with highway or, rather, airwave robbery has proposed to the broadcasting cartel that stations post on the Web the names of the billionaires, and front organizations – many of them super PACs — paying for campaign ads. It’s simplicity itself: give citizens access online to find out quickly and directly who’s buying our elections. Hardly an unreasonable request, given how much cash the broadcasters make from their free use of the airwaves.

But the broadcasting industry’s response has been a simple, declarative “Not on your life!” It would cost too much money, they claim. Speaking on their behalf, Robert McDowell, currently the only Republican commissioner on the FCC – the other one left to take a job with media monolith Comcast — said the proposal is likely “to be a jobs destroyer” by distracting station employees from doing their regular work. The party line also has been sounded by Jerald Fritz, senior vice president of Allbritton Communications, who told the FCC that making the information available on the Internet “would ultimately lead to a Soviet-style standardization of the way advertising should be sold as determined by the government.” We’re not making this up.

Steven Waldman, who was lead author of the report that led to the FCC’s online proposal, quotes a letter from the deans of twelve of our best journalism schools: “Broadcast news organizations depend on, and consistently call for, robust open-record regimes for the institutions they cover; it seems hypocritical for broadcasters to oppose applying the same principles to themselves.”

Hypocritical, but consistent with a business that values the almighty dollar over public service. The industry leaves nothing to chance. Through its control of the House of Representatives, it got a piece of legislation passed this past week euphemistically titled the FCC Process Reform Act. George Orwell must be spinning in his grave – this isn’t reform, it’s evisceration.

Not only does the bill remove roadblocks to more media mergers – further reducing competition – it would subject every new rule and every FCC analysis of that rule to years of paper work and judicial review, enabling the industry’s horde of lawyers and lobbyists, “to throw sand in the works at every opportunity” as one expert puts it. There was a noble attempt by California Congresswoman Anna Eshoo to include in this bill an amendment that, like the FCC proposal, called for stations to post on-line who’s putting up the big bucks for political ads. Shocker — it was rejected. Score another one for the plutocrats.

There is some good news. The White House opposes this latest bid by the broadcasting oligarchy to further eviscerate the public interest. And the fate of the House bill in the Senate is uncertain at best. In the meantime, as far as those political ads go, we’re not totally helpless. Here’s what you can do: Under current law, local television stations still have to keep paper files of who’s paying for these political ads, and they have to make those files available to the public if requested. You can even make copies to take away with you. So just go down to your nearest station, politely ask for the records, and then send the data online to the New America Foundation’s Media Policy Initiative or to the organization of investigative journalists called ProPublica. Both have mounted campaigns to get the information online.

Each is pulling together all the information on political ads they get from you and others — crowdsourcing — and making it available to the entire country via the Internet. If you’re a high school teacher or college professor of journalism, have your students do it and maybe give them classroom credit for collecting the data democracy needs to work.

The News Networks' SOPA Blackout

Monday, January 9, 2012 by Save the Internet

by Josh Levy

 

You may have heard about the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. Simply put, this Web-censorship bill in the House could open the door to widespread Internet censorship.

Opposition to the bill has reached a boiling point. Millions of activists, hundreds of startups, social media sites like Tumblr, Reddit and Twitter and even big companies like Google, Yahoo! and eBay have joined with Free Press and other Internet advocacy groups against it.

This is one of the biggest tech stories of the year. Yet as a recent report from Media Matters for America shows, TV news has ignored it.

According to the report, SOPA — and Protect IP, its cousin in the Senate — have “received virtually no coverage from major American television news outlets during their evening newscasts and opinion programming.” Among the offenders are ABC, CBS, Fox News, MSNBC and NBC.

A likely reason for the media blackout? The big networks — and their parent companies — support these two Internet-censorship bills.

This is what happens when the interests of big business get in the way of the need to inform the public and protect free speech. These same media giants are lobbying the Federal Communications Commission to loosen its ownership rules and allow for even more media consolidation — another issue they’ve failed to cover. If the FCC permits runaway consolidation, media blackouts like the one affecting SOPA could become even more common.

Meanwhile, rank-and-file journalists are coming out strong against these censorship bills. And print media have reported on them. Earlier this month New York Times columnist David Carr wrote that SOPA was “alarming in its reach.” Time, the Atlantic, Forbes and the Boston Globe have all reported on the legislation in the past week.

What is TV news afraid of?

These networks — ABC, CBS, Fox News, MSNBC and NBC — need to be held accountable for failing to provide coverage of such damaging legislation.

High Noon for Internet Freedom

Friday, September 30, 2011 by SavetheInternet.com

by Tim Karr

 

 

As democracy movements worldwide struggle to speak out via the Internet, many here in the U.S. may have overlooked an effort in Congress to undermine this basic freedom.

It takes the form of an arcane "resolution of disapproval" now wending its way through the Senate. If it passes, the resolution would void a recent Federal Communications Commission rule that seeks to preserve long-held Internet standards that protect users against blocking and censorship.

The resolution would remove these protections. It was put forth by industry-funded members of Congress who don't mind letting the few corporations who sell Internet access in America decide what we get to see, hear and read on the Internet.

These senators are also hoping the resolution will appease the most paranoid among the Tea Party faithful, who equate any consumer safeguard put in place during the Obama era with myriad and shadowy government plots.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who pushed a similar measure through the House earlier this year, stoked these fears when she said, "the FCC is in essence building an Internet Iron Curtain that will restrict more of our freedom."

Blackburn's rhetoric puts her and other supporters of the resolution far outside of the mainstream of Americans, who believe that neither the government nor corporations should be able to censor lawful content online.

If Congress succeeds in passing this measure, it will go well beyond deciding whether the FCC's recent rules are appropriate. The resolution will prohibit the agency from engaging in any effort to protect Internet freedom. The move opens the path for corporations eager to take a wrecking ball to the open architecture that has made the Internet a great equalizer for all users.

Lobbyists and lawyers working for the likes of AT&T, Comcast and Verizon have argued that these companies need to take control of your clicks in order to more efficiently--and profitably--manage the abundance of user-driven innovations online. They promise to be good stewards of this unruly medium if only regulators would take away the one network protection that ensures everyone's right to connect with everyone else on the Internet.

That's not what the Internet's founders intended. They built the network to be free of gatekeepers, giving each user equal access to all the legal content and applications online.
These engineers couldn't have envisioned that this open design would, in a relatively short time, evolve to make the network a potent political tool for freedom movements and democratic organizing worldwide.

But it has. Think of the explosion of Internet organizing and political expression that has swept the world in 2011, from Tunisia to Tehran to Beijing, and is now being embraced in America by protesters determined to Occupy Wall Street.

Americans cherish freedom of speech as much as people across North Africa, the Middle East and Asia. An open Internet allows all sides of contentious issues to be heard by anyone who chooses to listen. It opens up a global pipeline for protest movements, a window for millions to witness injustices and a platform upon which to organize for a better future.

So ask yourself this. Do you want Congress to surrender your right to choose online to a company whose sole motive is to generate as much profit as possible? Do you want to wipe away the only protection that prevents any entity--be it corporate or government--from blocking our right to connect with one another?

The hardliners in Congress who support this resolution have joined in a pact with powerful Internet providers and free-market extremists to kill off your most fundamental online right.
It's now up to us users to use the open Internet to reclaim it.

Telecommunications Companies in the US May Be Spying on You Every Day

It's Not Just News Corp: There is reason to believe that the media we've entrusted to investigate abuses of privacy are part of the cover up.
By Eliot Cohen, Buzzflash at TruthOut
Posted on August 20, 2011


When Guardian reporter, Nick Davies, broke the story that Rupert Murdoch's News of the World had been hacking British citizens' voicemail messages, including those of a murdered teenager, there was a public outcry. Unfortunately, this is the tip of a glacial iceberg that has the potential to bring down a lot more than the News of the World.

Last year, without due public debate and input, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Justice Department approved a merger between Comcast and NBC Universal that gave the Internet cable giant control over the programming of NBC news. At the same time, pursuant to the 2008 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act, Comcast as well as all other telecommunication companies are required to cooperate with the Federal government in providing the facility for government to search through all electronic communications sent down their pipes.

So presently, the government, with the help of Comcast and other telecommunication companies, can hack everyone's phone and email conversations. Here also lies a new 21st century media model: a telecom company that owns and operates the infrastructure for the digital transmission of news and information; simultaneously owns the newsroom; and uses it infrastructure to assist the government in mass, warrantless surveillance of all American citizens.

The News of the World spied on a relatively few number of individuals for the purpose of getting a story. Comcast routinely spies on millions of people on behalf of government. The official purpose of such spying is to uncover terrorist plots; however, racial profiling can be used to conduct searches; mass sweeps are warrantless; and adequate judicial oversight of screening criteria and procedures is lacking. Worse still, in this brave new world, the media entrusted to keep an eye on government abuses of power is now part of this overreaching power structure.

Further, given the symbiotic relationship between media and government, there is nothing to stop Comcast from examining the email messages and phone conversations of rival news organizations, political opponents, and other persons and organizations of interest in an effort to "adjust" its news coverage and massage its bottom line. In fact, Comcast has maintained that it has a broad right to monitor its customers' email messages and Internet activities. It has an established history of having spied on its customers as well as preventing them from sharing files. Further, it is presently lobbying Congress to do away with net neutrality, the principle that assures that everyone, not just giant media companies, has an equal voice on the Internet. And, in 2008, Chris Albrecht, presently CEO of Starz TV, reported that Comcast's senior VP told him that Comcast was experimenting with installing cameras into its cable boxes thereby allowing it to see into people's living rooms and identify viewers.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department now has good reason to look the other way should Comcast engage in such eavesdropping activities since it is beholden to Comcast as Comcast is to government. As for the FCC, shortly after voting to approve the Comcast/NBC Universal merger, Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker took a job working for Comcast as a lobbyist. This latter fact may be more disturbing than the fact that British Prime Minister Cameron employed former News of the World Editor Andy Coulson as his communications chief. Yet, the British Prime Minister had his head on the proverbial chopping block for so doing, while the curious revolving door at the FCC received virtually no press whatsoever. Small wonder, of course, that Comcast/NBC didn't cover the story.

Recently the progressive political talk show host, Cenk Uygur, was fired from MSNBC because he was not towing the establishment line. According to Uygur, MSNBC head Phil Griffin told him, "I was just in Washington and people in Washington tell me that they're concerned about your tone ... I'd love to be an outsider, outsiders are cool, but we're not outsiders; we're insiders; we are the establishment."

The meanings of the terms "insider" and "outsider" in this context are subject to interpretation, but there is one thing that is clear. The head of MSNBC thinks that the newsroom must work cooperatively with government. To be on the inside as opposed to the outside means to be a partner, not an adversary. In contrast, to be an outsider is not to be "in" with government. Outsiders are therefore able to maintain distance and avoid conflict of interest. Insiders have a conflict of interest in covering the news while outsiders don't. As the Fourth Estate, the press cannot be an insider and still do its job.

As an insider, Comcast has a conflict of interest in covering the activities of government. This conflict also includes its interest in maintaining access to government spokespersons, the loosening of media ownership rules by the FCC, tax incentives, and the awarding of military defense contracts (all of which impair corporate media's ability to objectively report government malfeasance).

Comcast/MSNBC is now also poised to hire Al Sharpton as Uygur's replacement. Sharpton was in fact a lobbyist for the Comcast/MSNBC merger, so the inbreeding and disintegration of an independent media couldn't be more obvious than in the case of Comcast.

But the idea of a giant telecom corporation such as Comcast, which simultaneously privately owns and controls the digital information highway and is also a major news provider, is a brand new idea. Couple this with the fact that this information gatekeeper is legally mandated to assist government in conducting mass, warrantless surveillance of all American citizens and the possibilities for violating citizens' civil liberty are incredibly high. Want to know if the corporate media/government is targeting progressive "outsiders"? Don't ask Comcast because this "insider" is doing the tracking

Presently, the corporate media landscape is one in which giant companies motivated by an insatiable thirst for money and power attempt to establish dominance. In this dog-eat-dog corporate world of mergers and acquisitions, both successful and failed, things rarely happen by accident.

It is therefore curious that the investigation into the News of the World's illicit eavesdropping activities, which had begun back in 2005, came to a head in 2011 just before Murdoch was about to seal a deal to purchase British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB). This company is the UK's largest pay-per view satellite company and a major broadband Internet provider.

So what would have happened if Murdoch's parent company, News Corp, got hold of BSkyB? It would have made News Corp the primary pay-per-view satellite company in Britain. It would also have made News Corp an even more formidable pay-per-view and broadband competitor to Comcast.

It is worth noting in this regard that Comcast also has a longstanding history of interest in the UK media market, including having made in 2007 a bid to purchase Virgin Media, which owns and operates UK's only national cable network. Add to this that, in 2010, BSkyB acquired Virgin Media TV, which included VMTV's entire channel portfolio, airtime advertising, and long-term rights to use of its cable TV network for Sky's own basic subscription channels. And add to this that Virgin Media has just introduced the world's fastest cable broadband for the UK, which could only have made the potential acquisition of BSkyB by Murdoch an even greater threat to Comcast.

So, the Murdoch scandal, which nixed the deal for him, was good for Comcast, bad for News Corp. Did Comcast help to stir the pot?

A likely first response to this question is that it was simply the luck of the draw, nothing more. But the point is that, we cannot put such probative questions past doubt when it comes to companies like Comcast and News Corp. These companies do not care about justice; they care about maximizing their bottom lines; and justice and maximization of profit are not necessarily the same.

Comcast is now the rising star among these behemoth monsters. The Comcast/NBC Universal merger has given this company incredible power to control both conduit and content of news and information in the digital age. Its close ties to government have eviscerated the purpose of the media as Fourth Estate. And its power to spy on all of us under the banner of "national security" has made it a formidable threat to the free world.

The corporate media has kept these facts well hidden. Meanwhile, the Murdoch scandal is all over the news, and Comcast is none too happy to cover it.

News Corp surely deserves the bad press it is presently receiving; but there is also underway an insidious assault on our basic civil liberties that isn't even being investigated. Sadly, the media entrusted to launch the investigation is part of the cover up.

AT&T Accidentally Tells Truth About 4G plan, Shoots Self in Foot

Wednesday, August 17, 2011 by Save the Internet

by Amy Kroin

 

Free Press and other opponents of the AT&T–T-Mobile merger had reason to cheer last week when a damning document AT&T filed with the FCC was accidentally posted on a public site. The partially redacted letter, which appeared on the FCC website for several hours on Thursday before it was yanked down, punctures a hole in AT&T’s central pro-merger argument — namely that only purchasing T-Mobile would allow it to expand its 4G LTE wireless data network to 97 percent of the population.

Turns out AT&T had considered expanding its network on its own but balked at the $3.8 billion price tag. “AT&T senior management concluded that, unless AT&T could find a way to expand its LTE footprint on a significantly more cost-effective basis, an LTE deployment to 80 percent of the U.S. population was the most that could be justified,” AT&T counsel Richard Rosen wrote in the letter. So AT&T concluded that it made better strategic sense to pony up $39 billion to purchase T-Mobile.

The logic makes perfect sense if your ultimate aim is to effectively bludgeon wireless competition. If the deal goes through AT&T’s primary rival, Verizon, will fall a distant second to AT&T in the wireless arena, and collectively the two will control 80 percent of that market. Can AT&T still pretend it had nobler intentions?

Yes, it can.

“There is no real news here,” said AT&T spokeswoman Margaret Boles in a statement released in the wake of the leak. “The confidential information in the latest letter is fully consistent with AT&T’s prior filings. It demonstrates the significance of our commitment to build out 4G LTE mobile broadband to 97 percent of the population following our merger with T-Mobile. Without this merger, AT&T could not make this expanded commitment.”

Yes, it could, Margaret. It just doesn’t want to. AT&T has long pinched pennies when it comes to providing adequate and comprehensive wireless service but has no problem unlocking its bank account if the end result is total market domination.

As Free Press has reported since the merger’s announcement, it’s not just wireless carriers who will get squashed if the merger goes through. As many as 20,000 workers — likely drawn from T-Mobile’s workforce — stand to get the boot as a result of the deal. And let’s not forget ordinary consumers. Less choice translates into a power dynamic in which AT&T — and Verizon — can dictate whatever rates or terms it wishes for customers who don’t have other options to turn to. Unless, that is, you count hooking up two Dixie cups to string and bellowing communications to your neighbor.

AT&T Wants to Give You an 80s Makeover

Saturday, May 28, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by Tim Karr

 

If you were around in the 80s, you might be experiencing a horrible flashback right about now.
No, it’s not because legwarmers and spandex are in style again. It’s because AT&T, that monopoly that once lorded over your rotary phone, has resurfaced with a scheme to rule your mobile phone as well.

Back in the 80s, AT&T’s power was near absolute. That’s why antitrust authorities stepped in to break up the monopoly and protect the American people against abuse.

Now, with AT&T’s planned $39 billion takeover of T-Mobile, we’re reaching the danger point again. And this time control over one of the most vital forms of communication is at stake.
If regulators allow AT&T’s takeover of T-Mobile, we would be left with a wireless market that is far more consolidated than the markets for oil, banking, automobiles and air travel.

What does that mean? To achieve comparable consolidation in the oil industry, ExxonMobil would have to merge with BP, Shell, Chevron-Texaco and Citgo. And to make the comparison even more acute, these oil giants would not only merge under ExxonMobil, but you would be required to buy only ExxonMobil gas for the next two years, or pay a steep termination fee.

It means that a service that is becoming as critical to Americans as affordable, reliable water and electricity will be under the thumb of two companies that place their narrow profit incentive above the interests of everyone else.

The problems with this mega-merger are glaring and obvious enough. The real issue is whether Washington regulators are going to muster the courage to speak out and stop it.

If the Federal Communications Commission and Department of Justice decide to rubber-stamp this deal, you’ll likely end up paying more to have AT&T drop your calls; and access to popular applications like Skype, Slingbox and Google Earth will be limited even further … if AT&T lets you use them at all.

Thousands of mobile phone users have already flooded the FCC with comments since news of AT&T’s mega-merger became public. (The deadline for public comments is next Tuesday, May 31.)

Fortunately, some in Washington are catching on. Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, on Wednesday said that such mergers "always eliminate more jobs than they create. There is every likelihood that the proposed acquisition of T-Mobile by AT&T could lead to both higher prices and decreased consumer choices." (Rep. Conyers' committee was convening a hearing on the issue later Saturday.)

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) who sits on the House Commerce Committee recently said the merger be a “historic mistake.”

They understand what the Justice Department knew in 1984, when it broke up the old Ma Bell: AT&T has gotten too big.

We can’t go back to the bad old days of legwarmers and AT&T. Washington must do its job and stop this merger.

Republican FCC Commissioner Who Approved NBC Merger Becomes Comcast Lobbyist

by: Nadia Prupis, Truthout
Friday 13 May 2011

Republican FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker will leave her position with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in June to serve as senior vice president of government affairs with Comcast-NBC.

"I am privileged to have had the opportunity to serve the country at a time of critical transformation in the telecommunications industry," Baker stated in a release. "The continued deployment of our broadband infrastructures will meaningfully impact the lives of all Americans. I am happy to have played a small part in this success."

The news follows a high-profile, $30 billion merger of Comcast and NBC earlier this year, which gave Comcast 51 percent of the stake in NBCUniversal (NBCU) and ownership over the majority of the network's channels, including CNBC and Bravo, as well as the Universal Pictures movie studio. Baker voted to approve the merger.

While reviewing the deal, Baker objected to the FCC's efforts to create conditions for the merger and called for reforms to the commission's review process, stating that it had taken too long and imposed excessive stipulations on Comcast-NBC.

The conditions included a few seven-year requirements for Comcast-NBC to maintain fair and competitive operations over the airwaves and online, show a minimum amount of local and children's programming and make high-speed Internet access available to 2.5 million low-income households.

The merger, which was approved 4-1, was criticized by media reform groups and many Democrats in Congress. After Baker's announcement that she would leave the FCC for Comcast-NBC, Free Press President and CEO Craig Aaron stated, "The continuous revolving door at the FCC continues to erode any prospects for good public policy."

"This is just the latest - but perhaps most blatant - example of so-called 'public servants' cashing in on companies they are supposed to be regulating," Aaron said.

Baker will not be able to lobby anyone at the FCC for two years as part of the commission's ethics pledge, which she signed upon joining in July 2009. Baker is also prohibited from lobbying any executive branch agency - but she will be able to lobby members of Congress as soon as she takes up her new position.

Democrat FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, who provided the single dissenting vote against the Comcast-NBC merger, said he was not expecting Baker's departure. Her announcement "caught me, like many others, by surprise," Copps said. "I join my colleagues in wishing her well in the years ahead."

Kyle McSlarrow, president of Comcast-NBC for Washington, DC, called Baker "one of the nation's leading authorities on communications policy" and said the company is "thrilled she's agreed to head the government relations operations for NBCUniversal. Meredith's executive branch and business experience along with her exceptional relationships in Washington bring Comcast and NBCUniversal the perfect combination of skills."

Comcast denied that it offered Baker the job before the merger had gone through.

Does AT&T Really Need Federal Assistance?

Oh Come on!!!
By Eric K. Arnold | Sourced from The Media Consortium 

May 4, 2011

The proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger continues to dominate media policy headlines, but the wireless merger isn’t the only game in town. AOL’s recent buyout of the Huffington Post has raised intellectual property issues, rural communities still lack speedy broadband access, and a proposed Verizon antenna in Oakland has come under fire by neighborhood activists.

AT&T an Underdog?

Telecommunications giant AT&T is many things, and an underdog in need of federal assistance isn't one of them. Yet Colorlines.com’s Jamilah King says that’s exactly how the company is portraying itself in its proposed $39 billion dollar takeover of T-Mobile.

In its official filing with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), King reports, “AT&T spends nearly 90 pages describing T-Mobile’s weaknesses, while detailing the roadblocks it says it’ll face if federal regulators don’t green light the deal.” If federal regulators block the deal, AT&T argues, its customers “would face a greater number of blocked and dropped calls as well as less reliable and slower data connections. And in some markets, AT&T’s customers would be left without access to more advanced technologies.”

It’s hard to feel sorry for AT&T, though, since the deal has raised concerns that consumers ultimately will pay more for cell phone service, which could adversely impact low-income, minority, and immigrant users who rely on the low-cost plans currently offered by T-Mobile. If the merger passes federal muster, King writes, “it’ll likely mean the unheralded return to prominence of the former Ma Bell monopoly that ruled American telecommunications for most of the twentieth century.”

Competition without Competitors

As Nancy Scola writes in The American Prospect, AT&T’s 381-page FCC filing essentially comes down to this: “you can have the benefits of competition without actual competitors.”

Scola traces the history of the telecommunications industry, touching on the 1982 antitrust case which resulted in the break-up of Ma Bell (aka AT&T) into seven Baby Bells, as well as analyzing current media policy in Washington:

As a powerful company that just announced $31 billion in revenues last quarter AT&T retains great sway. The FCC often defers to the company's role as the founders of American telecommunications. And Congress, a recipient of large sums of AT&T cash, often seems dazzled by the company's bright lobbyists who talk in confusing but exciting ways about ‘spectrum synergies’ and ‘LTE deployment.’

The takeaway? Congress and federal regulators need to put consumers’ needs ahead of the telecoms:

In 21st-century America, mobile phones are simply far too important a technology for Washington to give them the usual treatment. With a breathtaking nine out of 10 Americans now owning a cell phone, the wireless market is one that has to work for consumers.

HuffPo Lawsuit, Boycott Highlight IP Issues in New Media Era

The AT&T/T-Mobile merger has garnered a lot of media attention, but it’s not the only merger worth scrutinizing. Truthout’s Nadia Prupis takes a closer look at reactions to the class-action lawsuit recently filed on behalf of Huffington Post’s unpaid bloggers. HuffPo was recently sold to AOL for $315 million. As Prupis reports, “the class-action suit, filed by freelance journalist Jonathan Tasini, alleges that the posts created by unpaid writers were worth an estimated $105 million, and that the profit should have been used as compensation.”

HuffPo founder Arianna Huffington is quoted as saying, “The vast majority of our bloggers are thrilled to contribute - and we're thrilled to have them."

Yet the merger—and the lawsuit—highlight one of the biggest issues facing contemporary journalism: The devaluation of intellectual property. For that reason, a number of former bloggers have instituted a boycott of HuffPo. As Prupis notes, “The Newspaper Guild of America, the National Writers Union and the AFL-CIO have all endorsed the boycott, with many of their members refusing to contribute to the web site until Huffington agrees to talk with the unions about how best to approach the changing landscape of online journalism.”

Rural Broadband Access Still Slow

Mark Scheerer of Public News Service tackles the issue of broadband access in rural communities – an important topic in a down economy, since faster connectivity could result in economic stimulus for small businesses, such as livestock farmers.

A new report (PDF at link) issued by the Center for Rural Strategies concludes that “communities without broadband service could be hobbled economically, losing the race to those with faster connections.”

Farmers in places like Stamping Ground, Kentucky, Scheerer says, are paying for high-speed broadband, yet receiving dial-up download speeds, which hinders efforts to “streamline and economize their livestock sales.”

The report essentially mirrors the FCC’s 2010 findings: “broadband providers are not expanding their services in a timely and satisfactory fashion.”

Activists Push Back Against Verizon Antenna

As Oakland Local’s Dennis Rowcliffe reports, a proposal by Verizon to install a powerful cellular antenna close to two schools and several residential units has been met with opposition by community groups.

“The residents, school parents and teachers express concerns about the potential health effects of sustained nearby exposure to increased levels of the electromagnetic frequency, or EMF, radiation emitted by the antennas,” Rowcliffe writes, adding that a group called East Bay Residents for Responsible Antenna Placement (EBR-RAP) has suggested several alternate sites, all of which were rejected by Verizon.

Verizon executive John Johnson is quoted as saying, “Please note that we intend to retain our rights to the city-approved location and to use it as the project site if we are unable to identify a viable alternative after further review.”

However, EBR-RAP members say they intend to keep up the pressure on Verizon until an alternate site is found.

Astroturfing Net Neutrality

Tuesday, April 19, 2011 by Save the Internet
by Tim Karr

Free speech online has come under withering attack from the Astroturf lobby -- corporate front groups that are determined to hand control of the Internet to companies like AT&T and Comcast.

They've joined the forces of the Tea Party and pro-corporate attack groups like Americans for Prosperity to urge weak members of Congress to betray the public interest by voting to strip the Federal Communications Commission of its ability to protect our basic freedom to access an open Internet.

And betray us is exactly what House representatives did earlier this month, passing a "Resolution of Disapproval" (H.J. Res. 37), which is designed to let phone and cable companies block any speech they don't like, charge users anything they can get away with, and hold innovation hostage to their profit margins.

If this resolution gets by the Senate and White House, there will be little anyone could do to stop these companies. The good new is that President Obama has already vowed to veto this resolution. (You can make sure that it doesn't get to his desk by urging your senators to kill H.J Res. 37).

The aim of front groups supporting this industry agenda is to stoke partisan rancor and fear over a principle called Net Neutrality -- a basic rule that keeps service providers from deciding what content we get to see and share via digital networks.

A favorite line of theirs is to portray Net Neutrality as part of a left-wing conspiracy, dismissing the vast coalition of people of every political stripe who believe that an open Internet is a basic requirement of a healthy, modern democracy.

An article earlier this month at Andrew Breitbart's website Big Government painted Net Neutrality as "oppressive" and "leftists policies" and urged readers to phone up Democrats and urge their vote for a Congressional "Resolution of Disapproval" that had been embraced by Rep. Michele Bachmann and pushed by House Speaker John Boehner.

Americans for Prosperity, the industry-funded Astroturf group with deep ties to the Koch Brothers, had asked its members to send letters to these and other congressional offices calling Net Neutrality "Obama's Internet takeover."

"Regulating the Internet under the banner of so-called network neutrality has been a far-left obsession for years," argues Americans for Prosperity VP of Policy Phil Kerpen.

Rhetoric aside -- it’s worth noting that companies like AT&T and Comcast have delivered truckloads of money to the re-election campaigns of most of those who voted against Net Neutrality. A recent report by MapLight.org illustrates the corrupting influence corporate donations have had in “convincing” members of Congress to turn against the interests of their constituents on this issue.

In the House, front groups' targeted Democratic Reps. Jason Altmire (PA-4), Sanford Bishop (GA-2), Leonard Boswell (IA-3), Jim Costa (CA-20), Henry Cuellar (TX-28), Reuben Hinojosa (TX-15), Tim Holden (PA-17), Rick Larsen (WA-2), Mike McIntyre (NC-7), Jerry McNerney (CA-11), Gregory Meeks (NY-6), David Scott (GA-13), and Heath Shuler (NC-11).

Of these, only two – Reps. Bishop and Scott – caved to industry pressure by voting for the resolution. But most every one has received considerable sums from the phone and cable lobby.

Now members of the Senate are hearing the same tune.

This push comes at a time when phone and cable companies have begun limiting our ability to connect with others and share information. Some like MetroPCS have already announced plans to block certain video applications via the mobile Web. Corporations like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon are seeking to degrade access to competing services or sites that might threaten their bottom line; they’re also moving to penalize users who use their Internet connection for more data-intensive purposes than simple Web surfing.

Net Neutrality – like the First Amendment itself – is an issue that should transcend politics.

Despite the partisan blather, it has received support from all corners -- from the socially conservative Christian Coalition to the rights advocates at ACLU, from librarians and educators to video gamers, journalists, musicians and even Harry Potter fans.

More than two million Americans have sent letters to the FCC and Congress urging leaders to "stand with the public by protecting Net Neutrality once and for all."

That's what real grassroots look like.

Just last week, Internet pioneer and die-hard Net Neutrality supporter Tim Berners-Lee said that access to the open Internet is "human right" that we all have "duty" to protect.

He’s right.

But don’t let that stop the hyperventilating among Beltway hacks intent on turning this into a divisive and politically charged issue.

Members of Congress without regard to party or ideology should ignore the astroturfing of a few to protect an open Internet that helps so many.