Back in the days before nearly everyone possessed a cell phone, people who needed to place calls while away from home often used pay phones.\u00a0 In many circumstances, it was considered common courtesy to make conversations as quick as possible, so that the next person in line could make their calls.\u00a0 In crowded areas, however, some pay phones actually enforced time limits in a form of usage optimization.<\/p>\n
Fast forward to today, with another form of optimization at issue.<\/p>\n
In a recent letter to Verizon, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler proclaimed himself \u201cdeeply troubled\u201d by Verizon\u2019s announcement that it will extend its Network Optimization policy to 4G LTE devices.\u00a0 “Network Optimization,\u201d or \u201cnetwork management,\u201d is not a new concept.\u00a0 It enables wireless carriers to deliver the best possible service to the highest volume of customers, by optimizing the data speeds of the heaviest 5% of unlimited plan customers, but only when a specific cell site is significantly congested.\u00a0 It serves as a necessary tool to ensure the best network experience for all<\/em> customers, which should logically be the number one priority for wireless providers.<\/p>\n Under Verizon’s announced extension, customers affected will be those using a 3G or 4G LTE device on an unlimited data plan, who have fulfilled their minimum contract term, who are among the top 5% of data users and who are connected to a cell site experiencing high demand at that time.\u00a0 In practice, that essentially means a person streaming a movie while playing a video game in the middle of Times Square for days on end \u2013 not the average consumer sending emails or scrolling through Facebook.<\/p>\n Chairman Wheeler’s letter, however, did not come as a surprise.\u00a0 Unfortunately, it the type of action that we’ve witnessed all too often from President Obama\u2019s other past FCC Chairmen.\u00a0 To wit, they habitually flex their regulatory muscles and ostentatiously harass wireless providers in order to placate the 1% of digital elites, at the expense of everyday consumers.\u00a0 The simple fact is that every<\/em> national wireless carrier employs some similar type of network management practice, because it serves the best interest of consumers.\u00a0 The US wireless market it is highly competitive, and carriers must strive to satisfy consumer demand or invite customer defection.<\/p>\n If Chairman Wheeler truly seeks to ensure that consumers receive the highest-quality wireless service, he would instead refocus the FCC’s best efforts toward releasing more spectrum, which constitutes a critical lifeline for the wireless industry, and which has the potential to resolve looming network congestion issues.\u00a0 The FCC\u2019s core mission is to manage spectrum \u2013 not to needlessly intervene in private market business decisions.<\/p>\n Accordingly, Chairman Wheeler should redirect his efforts away from government overreach designed to help the proverbial “1%” of digital elites, and more toward measures that actually matter to and benefit the 99%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Back in the days before nearly everyone possessed a cell phone, people who needed to place calls while away from home often used pay phones.\u00a0 In many circumstances, it was considered common courtesy to make conversations as quick as possible, so that the next person in line could make their calls.\u00a0 In crowded areas, however, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[188,4558,4557,4397],"class_list":["post-21212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-fcc","tag-network-management","tag-network-optimization","tag-tom-wheeler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21212"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21215,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21212\/revisions\/21215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}