Carriers Look to Next US Administration

[Brian Warkoczeski]

Carriers Look to Next US Administration

Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service, www.yahoo.com

June 18, 2008

The major U.S. telecommunications carriers aren't sure what to expect 
from the next presidential administration, but at least one is hoping 
for a resolution of the Comcast net neutrality issue before President 
George Bush leaves office.

Network neutrality will be a key issue facing either Republican Senator 
John McCain or Democratic Senator Barack Obama if either of those 
presumptive party nominees wins the November election, carrier 
executives said during a panel discussion at the NXTcomm conference in 
Las Vegas on Tuesday. Others include potential acquisitions and the 
prices incumbent carriers can charge competitors for access to their lines.

The president appoints the five-member U.S. Federal Communications 
Commission, though only three members can be from the same political 
party. Under Bush, the commission has been weighted against government 
regulation in general, though it has cracked down in media decency and 
some other areas. The carrier officials didn't lay out many clear 
predictions about a shift from Republican to Democratic control, nor 
about a change from Bush to McCain.

The heated issue of net neutrality boiled over earlier this year when 
cable operator Comcast was accused of throttling traffic that uses the 
BitTorrent P-to-P (peer-to-peer) file-sharing protocol. It acknowledged 
doing so, invoking its right to manage its own network as justification. 
The dispute led to renewed calls for legislation guaranteeing consumers 
can use broadband networks for any legal purpose without discrimination. 
Comcast said earlier this month it would stop targeting specific network 
protocols for throttling but instead would slow traffic during peak 
hours for customers who used a "disproportionate" amount of capacity. 
The FCC is investigating Comcast but has not taken formal action against it.

"I think it's in the interest of the industry for the FCC to make a 
judgment on the Comcast issue" in 2008, said Thomas Tauke, executive 
vice president of public affairs, policy and communications at Verizon 
Communications. The impact of a change in the White House isn't clear, 
he said.

"There's no question that Senator Obama is committed to the notion of 
net neutrality. To the best of my knowledge, he has not yet really 
defined what that means or how he would intend to implement that 
policy," Tauke said.

A position statement on the Obama campaign Web site says the candidate 
is opposed to a "two-tier" Internet in which some content providers pay 
for preferential treatment on networks.

"Barack Obama supports the basic principle that network providers should 
not be allowed to charge fees to privilege the content or applications 
of some Web sites and Internet applications over others," and will 
"protect the Internet's traditional openness," the statement says, 
without describing how he would do this. There is no clearly marked 
statement about net neutrality on McCain's site.

The carriers advocated case-by-case enforcement of the FCC's neutrality 
principles, adopted in 2005.

"Our big concern has been having legislation or rules adopted which 
would anticipate what problems might occur three, five, seven years down 
the road... when we don't even know how the industry will evolve," said 
James Cicconi, senior executive vice president of external and 
legislative affairs at AT&T.

But he called the Comcast-BitTorrent case a blessing in disguise.

"The BitTorrent case has really brought this debate down to some 
specifics which people can really get their arms around," Cicconi said. 
"I do think there is some movement here. We don't get push-back as much 
anymore when we talk about reasonable network management." There are 
even things that critics of the carriers want them to be able to do in 
the networks, he said.

An executive of Sprint Nextel, who railed against "forbearance" 
petitions that the FCC has granted to waive price controls on incumbent 
carriers' lines, said the next president will have to face the 
consequences of FCC policies under Bush.

"What you've seen is just a landslide of petition after petition" 
granted, said Anna Gomez, vice president of government affairs for 
telecom at Sprint.

The outcome of the November election might play a decisive role if there 
are more large service-provider mergers, said Matthew Cantor, an 
attorney at Constantine Cannon, who also spoke on the panel. In 
particular, a carrier's attempt to buy a satellite TV broadcaster would 
raise tough competition issues, he said.

"Under a Bush administration, I think clearly the deal's going to go 
through. I think under an Obama administration, it might be a harder 
sell," Cantor said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20080618/tc_pcworld/