Freedom Line Blog

We continue to highlight the potentially disastrous consequences if the Biden Administration FCC revives the “Net Neutrality” zombie briefly imposed by the Obama Administration, which caused private broadband investment to decline for the first time in history outside of a recession.

When the FCC under Ajit Pai reversed the Obama FCC’s order in 2017, the usual litany of partisan leftists and latenight comedians predicted disaster.   Instead, as we’ve often noted, investment and internet speeds proceeded to increase.

Well, something else increased:  American consumers’ satisfaction with their internet service.  Something to keep in mind as the needless “Net Neutrality” debate returns:

Ending “Net Neutrality” Boosted U.S. Consumer Satisfaction

In our latest Liberty Update, we highlight how the Biden Administration is inexplicably resurrecting the zombie “Net Neutrality” that caused demonstrable harm to internet service during its mercifully brief lifetime at the end of the Obama Administration.  Once again, our friend economist Steve Moore illustrates one of the critical points in this debate well.  Namely, internet speeds shot back sharply upward after the Trump Administration FCC under Ajit Pai repealed the Obama FCC’s Title II-Net Neutrality order:

Repealing “Net Neutrality” Increased Speeds

We recently highlighted how prescription drug costs defy today’s otherwise out-of-control inflation, which makes it all the more odd that the Biden Administration and the Pelosi-Schumer Congress seek to impose drug price controls (which will suffocate future innovation, not relieve consumers).

Well, federal government statistics identify another critical consumer product that defies inflationary pressures, yet also remains the target of Biden Administration efforts to expand the federal regulatory state:  internet service.   Something of which legislators and regulators must remain mindful as yet another destructive “Net Neutrality” campaign looms.

Broadband Defies Inflationary Pressures

As Americans express growing alarm over consumer price inflation that commenced in January 2021 under the Biden Administration and Pelosi/Schumer Congress (see here), it’s worth highlighting how critical broadband access on which our economy increasingly depends has diverged from that trend.  It’s also worth highlighting that stems from the fact that internet service has so far escaped Biden Administration regulatory attempts to reverse free-market progress achieved under former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai:

In recent months CFIF has highlighted the destructive way in which the aviation industry and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) continue to unreasonably oppose deployment of super-fast 5G wireless in the U.S., placing us at an alarming technological and economic disadvantage globally.

Our friend Bret Swanson at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) just added his own expert perspective of the needless delay due to the FAA’s laughable suggestion that “planes might fall from the sky”:

Nearly 40 nations already have networks operating in the mobile C-band frequencies, and planes are doing just fine.  What’s more is that the US has an extra layer of protection in the form of a wider guard band — more than 200 MHz of empty space between the mobile radio and airplane frequencies.  This safety buffer is far more than most nations employ.  The US military also employs radar technologies close to the altimeter band that pump out radio waves at 10,000 times the power of the commercial mobile C-band radios.  Again, no problems.

The wireless and aviation industries — and their regulators — have discussed these technical matters for years, and the resolution enshrined in the FCC’s C-band auction rules was more than sensible.  The aviation industry has even been boasting about the possibilities 5G wireless will bring to flight operations.”

Swanson adds an interesting note on the potential cronyism and territorialism that may explain this stubborn opposition:

Many seasoned observers think the aviation industry is really looking for Washington (i.e., taxpayers) to buy them new altimeters to replace the old ones now operating in most of the fleet.  Delay 5G with scary ‘falling planes’ rhetoric, then back off when the new equipment is promised.”

He concludes by nicely summarizing what’s at stake here:

In a recent Liberty Update we sounded the alarm on Joe Biden’s hasty nomination of extremist Gigi Sohn to sit on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), highlighting how she’s simply too radical to be confirmed to the FCC at a time when Americans rely more than ever on a thriving internet service sector that her agenda would undermine.

Today, The Wall Street Journal echoed that alarm and explained the myriad ways in which she would threaten one of the few sectors that has continued to flourish throughout the Covid pandemic:

She was a counselor to Obama FCC Chair Tom Wheeler and was a driving force behind the ‘net neutrality’ regulation that classified broadband providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934…  The enormous regulatory uncertainty caused broadband investment to decline, though it picked up after the Trump FCC scrapped the rule.  Ms. Sohn supports making the Wheeler rule even more burdensome…

The FCC is currently split 2-2, and if Ms. Sohn is confirmed, Democrats will move quickly on the progressive agenda.  Mr. Biden has also renominated Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel to another term as agency Chair.  A source says Biden Administration officials wanted to name Ms. Sohn as Chair but worried that moderate Democratic Senators would then reject her nomination.

Ms. Sohn’s strident partisanship should disqualify her from serving as an officer of an independent agency with so much power to control the public airwaves.  There’s also a risk that the President could designate her as Chair after she’s confirmed, as he did with the radical Lina Khan on the Federal Trade Commission.”

Ms. Sohn is simply too radical to be confirmed to the FCC at a time when Americans rely more than ever on a thriving internet service sector.  The Biden Administration has only itself to blame for its delay in nominating Ms. Sohn, and The Wall Street Journal confirms the growing consensus that the U.S. Senate should reject her nomination and spare us the enormous risk she presents.

CFIF continues to highlight how Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai’s “light touch” regulatory approach benefits Americans immensely in terms of internet service, particularly amid the ongoing coronavirus lockdown.  The left-leaning Pew Research Center offers an encouraging new survey in that regard, highlighting how large majorities agree that while internet service remains essential, it’s something better left to private internet providers than the federal government:

Public Disfavors Federal Internet Control

We recently highlighted how the Trump Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under the leadership of Chairman Ajit Pai did Americans a favor in repealing the 2015 Obama FCC “Net Neutrality” regulation that treated internet service as a public utility.  That Obama FCC effort needlessly reversed the “light-touch” regulatory approach that prevailed from 1996 through 2015, through both Democratic and Republican administrations, and which had allowed the internet to become the most quickly transformative innovation in human history.  In contrast, after the Obama FCC “Net Neutrality” order, private broadband investment fell for the first time ever outside of a recession.

And now, amid the sudden coronavirus pandemic and lockdown, Americans can be grateful for Chairman Pai’s leadership on that issue because the U.S. has more smoothly accommodated the suddenly higher internet burdens than our European counterparts, who more broadly adhere to the heavy-regulatory Obama FCC “Net Neutrality” approach.  In that vein, former Clinton Administration Undersecretary of Commerce Ev Ehrlich emphasizes precisely that point in today’s Wall Street Journal:

I was Undersecretary of Commerce during the Clinton Administration when the Telecommunications Act of 1996 passed.  That law produced some of the best and most affordable broadband in the world.  Our networks are performing much better than those in Europe, Australia and India because we created a deregulatory regime to allow different technologies – cable, fiber, mobile – to compete against one another.  As a result, 95% of Americans today have high-speed broadband available and 80% have access to gigabit speeds.”

Bipartisan consensus is rare in today’s charged political culture, but it’s nice to see a former Clinton Administration official confirm the point – a “light-touch” regulatory approach to internet service has benefited America vis-a-vis the suffocating regulatory approach favored by leftist partisan activists, Europe and the Obama Administration.  For that we should also thank the current FCC under Chairman Pai.

Echoing CFIF, today’s Wall Street Journal board editorial applauds Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai’s and Commissioner Brendan Carr’s expressions of support for the proposed T-Mobile/Sprint merger:

By joining forces, T-Mobile and Sprint will be better positioned to compete against wireless leaders Verizon and AT&T in the 5G era.   Sprint is sitting on loads of mid-band spectrum that boosts wireless speeds while T-Mobile boasts ample low-band spectrum that provides coverage.  The combination is likely to provide a faster, denser network.”

As they rightly conclude, “government penalties pale next to the powerful market incentives that already exist for Sprint and T-Mobile to rapidly build out their networks lest they lose market share to Verizon, AT&T, cable companies and even satellite startups being launched by Amazon and SpaceX.”  Well put.

What’s old is somehow new again on the political left.

Desperate for what they perceive as street cred, leftists continue to repackage failed policies as somehow novel, in a destructive race to claim the most extreme realms of the political continuum.

Merely three decades after it was consigned to the dustbin of failed ideas, socialism actually maintains renewed popularity on the left.  According to Gallup, a majority of Democrats no longer view capitalism favorably, but almost 60% view socialism positively.

People like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D – New York) advocate a return to income tax rates not seen since President John F. Kennedy began cutting them.  Thirty-five years after Jeane Kirkpatrick delivered her famous 1984 Republican convention speech castigating those who “blame America first,” people like Representative Ilhan Omar (D – Minnesota) tweet, “We must confront that our nation was founded by genocide and we maintain global power through neocolonialism.”

Not to be outdone, Democrats in the House of Representatives have joined the fray by attempting to resuscitate one of the Obama Administration’s most foolish and demonstrably destructive agenda items – to begin regulating the internet as a public utility.

Think of it as socialism for the internet.  What could possibly go wrong?

Plenty, it turns out.

From 1996 through 2015, the internet flourished like no other innovation in human history, precisely because the federal government from the Clinton Administration forward employed a “light-touch” regulatory approach.  Just ask yourself what was “broken” about the internet that somehow cried out for a federal bureaucratic “fix” during that two-decade stretch of unprecedented innovation and transformation of our lives.

But like so many other realms of American economic and civic life, the Obama Administration decided in 2015 that the internet merited its trademark brand of hyper-regulation.  Specifically, its Federal Communications Commission (FCC) suddenly decided to regulate internet service as a “public utility” under statutes enacted in the 1930s for copper-wire telephone service.  In Orwellian fashion, the Obama Administration and its apologists throughout the media and entertainment industries labeled it “Net Neutrality,” when by definition federal commandeering of an entire industry and picking winners and losers via the business model it imposes is anything but “neutral.”

So how did the Obama FCC’s scheme work out?

Disastrously.  For the first time in history outside of a recession, private investment in network infrastructure by service providers actually declined.   By way of comparison, investment in wireless alone had increased almost 33% – from $25 billion to $33 billion – between 2010 and 2013, even amid the most sluggish cyclical economic “recovery” in history under the Obama Administration.  But in the first year alone following the Obama FCC’s bright idea to regulate the internet, investment declined by an astonishing $5.6 billion.

In other words, investment declined in just one year by almost the entire amount that wireless investment had increased from 2010 to 2013.

When the Trump Administration arrived, one of its first priorities under new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai was to reverse that destructive Obama Administration boondoggle.

Latenight comedians and leftists in media and politics attempted to convince Americans that the sky was falling, and that this would “break the internet.”  But as noted above, it was the Obama Administration’s 2015 effort that was breaking the internet, while the Trump FCC under Ajit Pai was merely restoring the light-touch regulatory approach that had allowed the internet to evolve and flourish from 1996 to 2015.

The results have been immediate and positive, as highlighted by a Recode piece entitled “U.S. Internet Speeds Rose Nearly 40 Percent This Year”:

The internet is getting faster, especially fixed broadband internet.  Broadband download speeds in the U.S. rose 35.8 percent and upload speeds are up 22 percent from last year, according to internet speed-test company Ookla in its latest U.S. broadband report.  The growth in speed is important as the internet undergirds more of our daily lives and the wider economy.  As internet service providers continue building out fiber networks around the country, expect speeds to increase…” 

But now, House Democrats have introduced legislation to return to the Obama Administration’s destructive internet regulation regime.  Perhaps airheaded latenight comedians like Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and John Oliver find that prospect soothing, but nobody else should.

“The United States has turned the page on the failed broadband policies of the Obama Administration,” FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr announced this week.  “By getting government out of the way,” he added, “internet speeds are up 40%, the digital divide is closing across rural America, and the U.S. now has the world’s largest deployment of next-generation 5G networks.”  Carr continued, “There’s a lot of common ground on net neutrality, but this bill studiously avoids it.  It elevates the partisan politics of Title II over widely supported rules of the road, and would turn back the clock on the progress America is making,” he concluded.

Wise words.   We all want net neutrality, but heavy-handed federal regulation of internet service is precisely the opposite.   We’ve already witnessed the unwelcome consequences of that scheme, as well as the beneficial consequences of reversing it under the new FCC leadership.  House Democrats’ legislation must be swiftly rejected accordingly.

Inexplicably, the U.S. Senate this week narrowly moved to restore 2015 Obama Administration Federal Communications Commission (FCC) crony capitalist internet regulations.  Here’s the effect that Obama FCC regulation immediately had on mobile broadband investment.  It’s now the duty of the House of Representatives and the Trump Administration to kill this mindless Obama-era attempt to regulate the internet, and we encourage everyone to contact their Representatives and the White House to demand that action.

Neutering the Net

As Congress considers reauthorization of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), it must exercise extreme diligence to prevent it from becoming a vehicle for crony capitalism and waste of taxpayer dollars.

Currently, Congressional FCC reauthorization includes provisions that would reimburse broadcasters in spectrum incentive auctions, which could in turn be exploited to subsidize the upcoming ATSC 3.0 transition, as many had predicted.  By way of background, ATSC 3.0 refers to the upcoming transition to yet another new broadcasting standard, which will force over-the-air viewers to purchase new television sets or converter equipment at their own expense.  If that rings a bell, it’s for good reason.  That’s what occurred in recent years with the last conversion.

Here’s the problem.  Current provisions could constitute a blank check at taxpayer expense to broadcasters so that they could fund new equipment for the transition from the U.S. Treasury, as the legislation creates a new Treasury Fund in an undisclosed amount of money.  Although broadcasters ostensibly must direct the money they receive only toward costs associated with the spectrum auction, the likely scenario remains that the FCC will remain unable to detect and stop waste, fraud and abuse if the funds are used instead to upgrade their equipment in pursuit of ATSC 3.0.

Accordingly, it’s important that Congress not allow this legislation to become a wasteful open account for broadcasters to exploit for their own benefit at taxpayer expense.  At a minimum, they must establish greater safeguards to ensure that waste, fraud and abuse are not allowed, and that American consumers are not deprived of access to over-the-air TV access as a consequence of necessary installation of ATSC 3.0 transition equipment funded by taxpayers, whether in whole or in part.

To be clear, we welcome any and all technological and telecommunications advancement in this field, but we must also remain vigilant against the looming likelihood of crony capitalism and waste of taxpayer dollars in an era of growing deficits and debt.  Congress must therefore ensure that protections against those possibilities are incorporated into upcoming FCC reauthorization.

This actually captures the illogic among those who advocate tighter federal government control over the internet fairly well:

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Net Neut Illogic

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Among the many positive changes within the federal government since the end of the Obama Administration and the arrival of the Trump Administration, perhaps none surpass those brought by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under new Chairman Ajit Pai.

And the most welcome and beneficial change undertaken by the new FCC is its action to rescind Obama FCC decisions to begin regulating the internet as a “public utility” under statutes passed in the 1930s for old-fashioned, copper-wire telephone service.  The Obama FCC’s action instantly began to stifle new broadband investment, and was subject to legal reversal.  The internet thrived for two decades under both the Clinton and Bush administrations precisely due to the federal government’s “light touch” regulatory policy, and there was simply no rational justification for reversing twenty years of success in the name of even more federal government regulation and crony capitalism.

As the new FCC approaches completion on restoring regulatory sanity to internet service, it’s important that it include a preemption against future state efforts to regulate the internet in the same way that the Obama FCC hoped to make permanent.  We at CFIF take a backseat to no one in terms of valuing America’s federalist system, and the ability of individual states to serve as “laboratories of democracy.”  But there’s an important limit, one that is specifically included in the text of the Constitution.  Namely, matters of interstate commerce.  Our Founding Fathers recognized, based upon  economic warfare that they’d witnessed under the Articles of Confederation, that individual states cannot act in ways that disrupt truly interstate commerce in ways that contravene federal policy.  Accordingly, the Constitution specifically and rightfully empowers the federal government to protect interstate commerce against destructive state interference.

And there are few, if any, sectors of our economy more “interstate” than the internet.  Indeed, the internet is interstate by its very nature.  Doug Brake of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation summarized the logic well in a commentary this month:

National and regional networks should be subject to uniform rules to keep compliance costs low and reduce complexity.  To the extent the upcoming changes to net neutrality regulation see any changes in business practices, which would be more minor than many expect, a uniform policy that allows for broad scale would be an important benefit…   Network applications now depend on economies of scale independent of the individual state in which they are consumed.  Technological advances are simply erasing the importance of state and local boundaries.  It is in the national interest to give these technologies room to grow unimpeded by artificial borders.

As such, beyond simply declaring broadband an information service, the FCC should make clear that broadband policy is made at the national, not state, level.  Former Chairman Kennard put it well in a 1999 speech titled ‘The Unregulation of the Internet:  Laying a Competitive Course for the Future.’   There he laid out why it was ‘in the national interest that we have a national broadband policy … a de-regulatory approach, an approach that will let this nascent industry flourish.'”

That’s exactly right, and it’s no less true today than it was in 1999.  The internet needed room to grow then, and it needs room and regulatory predictability to continue growing as it plays a progressively important role in  our lives and globally competitive economy.

We cannot allow a spaghetti bowl of individual state regulations to inhibit future internet expansion and innovation, and the FCC should act to preempt that destructive possibility.

The new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been one of the most consistently outstanding agencies of the Trump Administration in terms of restoring regulatory sanity after eight years of politicized abuse throughout the Obama Administration.

Unfortunately, the FCC remains under assault from groups seeking to leverage federal policy toward its own advantage, and continued vigilance is critical.

In just the latest illustration, broadcasters have begun pressuring the FCC to allow television stations to begin transmitting signals in a new “ATSC 3.0” format.  Also referred to as “Next Gen,” such a transition would impact every American consumer who watches television, and not necessarily for the better.  In addition to costing taxpayers, it could create a de facto federal mandate on television service providers.

First, the ATSC 3.0 format is incompatible with existing televisions and set-top boxes, meaning that Americans who wanted to simply continue watching television would have to purchase new equipment or join a pay-TV provider that had spent the time and money transitioning its equipment.  That, of course, would be a cost transferred to customers.

Second, the proposed transition could also mean weaker signals for consumers who choose over-the-air broadcast.  That’s because it would involve simulcasting from facilities with smaller or new coverage areas, placing rural voters in particular jeopardy.

Additionally, ATSC 3.0 could bring more dreaded blackouts, since broadcasters could seek to force pay-TV providers to carry ATSC 3.0 signals under threat of blackout (a tactic broadcasters have exploited in the past on behalf of such efforts as ratcheting up retransmission fees).  Accordingly, broadcasters can leverage their government-provided bargaining position to obtain higher fees for themselves via threat of consumer blackouts, which they’ll surely employ in their effort to force consumers and providers to purchase the new equipment necessary for reception.

That, of course, translates to higher costs for consumers, or giving up their favored programming altogether.

The better alternative is to let market forces work, by making the Next Gen transition wholly voluntary.  Broadcasters operate under an umbrella of government license, which allows them to hold consumers hostage in order to increase revenues.  Accordingly, the FCC should continue its good works by rejecting broadcasters’ attempt to leverage federal bureaucracy to achieve a new government handout to be subsidized by consumers.  Next Gen should be a truly voluntary standard that doesn’t leave consumers holding the bill for the broadcasters’ innovation.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner Robert McDowell offers a timely and instructive commentary entitled “The FCC Gets Set to Free Wireless,” in which he explains the important work by new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai:

The Federal Communications Commission this month is launching initiatives that will shape the fate of America’s wireless industry.  Last week it started to examine competition in the market, and this week it will propose taking Depression-era utility regulations off mobile broadband while protecting an open internet.  This is only the beginning.  The FCC is acting on a rare opportunity to correct its recent mistakes and restore the Clinton-era light-touch regulatory framework that will drive economic growth and job creation.”

As we at CFIF have detailed, the internet flourished over two decades like no other innovation in human history, precisely because of the light-touch regulatory approach started under Clinton as McDowell notes, and continued through the Bush Administration.  But in 2015, Obama’s FCC under former Chairman Tom Wheeler decided to “fix” an internet that wasn’t broken by regulating it as a “public service” under the 1930s copper-wire telephone laws that McDowell references.  As Chairman Pai recently noted, domestic broadband capital expenditures fell for the first time ever outside of a recession.

McDowell notes how the mobile industry experienced “an explosion of entrepreneurial brilliance,” incredible innovation in just a few short years, massive investment, falling consumer prices (25% in the past decade) and arrival of the app economy.  Importantly, he highlights that, “Three quarters of the companies in the global app economy are American.”  Unfortunately, the Obama FCC’s rush to commandeer yet another sector of the U.S. economy imposed an unnecessary threat to that innovation:

Yet since 2009, the FCC has ignored its own studies and refused to determine that the market is competitive. That would have contradicted the rationale for its regulation binge, but new political and market realities make a fresh start possible.”

Fortunately, new leadership under Chairman Pai offers the opportunity to correct that mistake before the harm intensifies:

The FCC should begin by liberating wireless from the heavy-handed rules of a 1934 law called Title II, which was created when phones were held in two hands.  This antiquated law imposes powerful economic regulations on the internet, chilling investment in broadband.  On Thursday the FCC will propose to unshackle the net from this millstone of a law.  This would restore the bipartisan light-touch policies that nurtured the burgeoning internet Americans enjoy today.”

It’s unfortunate that a federal bureaucracy decided in its wisdom that regulating the thriving internet as a “public utility” under a 1934 law was a good idea in the first instance.  But as McDowell cheerfully notes, the opportunity to prevent further harm and restore the innovation and investment that characterized internet service for over two decades is here.  For that we should thank Chairman Pai and support his common-sense restoration of regulatory sanity at the FCC.

Good news within the federal regulatory leviathan has been depressingly rare, perhaps most of all at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).  This week, however, brought a remarkably welcome development worthy of celebration.

Specifically, the FCC delayed its vote on a toxic and entirely unwarranted new proposal to regulate cable television set-top boxes before the Obama presidency’s clock expires, in what The Wall Street Journal labeled “a major blow to the proposal” and “a setback to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler on one of his top priorities for the year.”

Even Democrats have attacked the scheme as a “massive new federal regulation,” and CFIF stands alongside a broad coalition of conservative and libertarian organizations in opposition.  The initiative from the overactive FCC seeks to impose a one-size-fits all mandate to make cable TV set-top boxes artificially compatible with third-party entertainment devices.  So even while cable companies themselves progressively and voluntarily move toward abandoning traditional cable boxes in favor of devices owned and maintained by individual customers as they prefer, Chairman Wheeler hopes to impose a 1990s-style regulation upon the industry.  That would essentially freeze in place the increasingly outdated model of set-top cable boxes that is already becoming an anachronism due to market forces.  Exacerbating matters, the proposal reeks of crony capitalism, as CFIF has highlighted.  The proposal is a confluence of regulatory overreach, technological sclerosis and crony capitalism.

Fortunately, this week’s decision within the FCC to delay a vote due to Wheeler’s apparent inability to persuade fellow Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel to his side provides a rare victory against years of FCC regulatory onslaught.  Although the bipartisan consensus among consumer groups, Congress, the innovation community and market participants must remain vigilant because the battle isn’t over, it’s welcome news worthy of note and celebration.

Alongside nearly every other conservative and libertarian organization of which we’re aware, CFIF opposes a toxic and wholly unnecessary new proposal from the Obama Administration’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to regulate cable television set-top boxes before the clock runs out on the Obama presidency.

But opposition extends across the political spectrum.  In today’s Wall Street Journal, former Clinton Administration Undersecretary of Commerce Ev Ehrlich excoriates the FCC’s proposed set-top box regulation for what it is — a crony capitalist, purloining, invasive, already-obsolete, anti-competitive, “massive new federal regulation”:

The Federal Communications Commission wants you, the consumer, to allow a new set-top box into your home that rearranges the programs you buy and inserts new advertising while tracking what you watch.  Movie studios, labor unions and civil rights groups all oppose it.  Why?  Because this ‘All-Vid’ proposal isn’t about the box fees the senators-turned-lobbyists decry.  Instead, it’s all about appropriating content.  Google and Amazon want to capture, repackage and profit from TV programming in their own competing services without having to pay for it…

If Google, Amazon or anyone else wants to build a better set-top box, they can do so the way these services have – in a way that respects federal privacy laws and negotiated licensing agreements with program producers.  Or they can actually license the content from creators, the way everybody else does, as opposed to demanding a gift from a captive FCC.”

Mr. Ehrlich gets it exactly right.

As we have stated, there is simply no realm of American life today that manifests badly-needed innovation, consumer choice, quality, affordability and sheer enjoyment than the video entertainment sector.  The variety and excellence of today’s video choices continues to expand at breakneck speed on (literally) a daily basis.  We therefore ask officials at all levels of government, as well as our 250,000 supporters and activists across the country, to oppose what Mr. Ehrlich rightly describes as a looming federal atrocity.

We are fortunate to live in what many have called the “Golden Age of Television,” a time when an explosion of creativity and innovation have collided to create more audience choice than ever before.

In light of that, the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) recent decision to “Unlock the Box” with their “AllVid” proposal seems especially puzzling.  Upon further reflection and considering the bigger picture, however, the misguided AllVid proposal regarding technology that is already antiquated and will soon  be entirely irrelevant is merely the most recent in a string of illogical and counterproductive proposals from the current FCC.

From the so called AllVid proposal to the FCC’s Privacy proposal, it is evident that we live not only in the “Golden Age of Television,” but also in the “Age of Asymmetrical Regulation.” Current regulations impose one set of rules upon incumbents in the telecommunications industry and another set of rules entirely for so-called  “edge” providers like Google. In fact, regulation under this FCC seems to deliberately create a crony capitalist environment where incumbents can’t compete and the edge providers alone can thrive.

Equally troubling is the abnormally notoriously close relationship between Google and the White House, a partnership that was extensively detailed in a recent piece in The Intercept. Not only did Google’s top lobbyist visit the White House 128 times, but during the company’s annual State of the Union YouTube interviews with the President, Google is reported to have planted questions on policy issues important to Google on at least 3 occasions. That conspicuous degree of access and flagrant favoritism suggests that it has contributed to the severely asymmetrical regulation that we continue to witness from this FCC.

Again and again we have seen examples of this type of successful rent-seeking behavior from Google, and their ilk, and the remedy is clear: the FCC must stop its transparent favoritism and heavy-handed regulation of the telecommunication incumbents.  Instead, it should focus on maintaining a level playing field. Regulating based on crony capitalist bias and personal friendship is not only wildly inappropriate, but also a recipe for interventionist disaster. Continuing to disproportionately impose destructive regulations on the telecommunications for the benefit of other favored sectors not only violates the rights of disfavored enterprises, it ultimately serves to stifle competition and innovation for years to come in same the way that all government interventions into the free market tend to do.

Throughout the Obama Era, his Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has destructively imposed regulation after regulation upon a tech and telecommunications market that was not broken.  Indeed, that sector has thrived like no other in the modern American economy.

An announcement today from Comcast provided just the latest evidence of that thriving market.

Specifically, Executive Vice President of Consumer Services Marcien Jenckes announced an Internet data trial that will introduce a terabyte data plan to its offerings.  Beginning June 1, data plans in trial markets will upgrade from 300 gigabytes to one terabyte, regardless of speed.

To place that in perspective, their average customer reportedly uses only 60 gigabytes per month – 940 gigabytes short of a terabyte.  A terabyte allows streaming of 700 hours of high-definition video, 12,000 hours of online gaming and 60,000 high-resolution photo downloads in a month.  Fewer than 1% of its customers even approach a terabyte in monthly usage, and even they will be free under the new plan to receive unlimited data for merely $50 more per month or individual increments of 50 gigabytes for $10.

In other words, the market is working without FCC “solutions” to non-existent problems.  This announcement offers merely the latest proof.