Category Archives: Telephone

Google v. Verizon v. FCC + Lobbyists

lock.png Verizon is suing the FCC about the watered down rules the FCC passed recently. Now Google has filed a complaint with the FCC about that. And apparently Verizon has been having private meetings with FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. Could this be one source of the illegal leaks the GAO finds the FCC providing to lobbyists?
While Verizon’s court case proceeds through the legal system, the company’s competitors have grown unhappy with the way that Verizon has handled its FCC lobbying. Frontline Wireless has gone so far as to ask the FCC to bar Verizon from the auction because Verizon has allegedly not disclosed some of its lobbying contacts with the agency quickly enough or in enough detail.

Despite Verizon’s reticence to spell out exactly what it has been talking about with FCC Chairman Kevin Martin in private meetings, Google believes that it has pieced the conversation together. Google’s understanding is that Verizon wants the FCC to impose the open access requirements only on the network, not on the devices. That is, Verizon could still sell handsets that are locked and controlled by the company, but its network would have to be open to unlocked handsets from any operator.

According to Google’s new public statement on the issue, “From our perspective, this view ignores the realities of the U.S. wireless market, where some 95 percent of handsets are sold in retail stores run by the large carriers. More to the point, it is simply contrary to what the FCC’s new rules actually say.” Those rules focus on customer freedom to access content and applications from any device.

In a filing with the FCC, Google asks the agency to stick to its original plan. The company points out that while the open access rules might make the spectrum less attractive to Verizon (and thus might bring in less money at auction), the rules actually make it “more attractive, not less” to Google.

— Google attacks Verizon’s attempt to water down 700MHz “open access” rules, By Nate Anderson, ars technica, October 04, 2007 – 11:11AM CT

Silly Google! Verizon is part of the incumbent duopoly, and you’re not!

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Benton, Universal Service, TPRC, Social Contract

bentonfoundation.png Many good papers on aspects of universal service at the Benton Universal Service Project:
As Congress and the FCC put universal service reform at the top of its telecom policy agenda, the Benton Foundation is supporting a series of papers advancing a new vision for Universal Service — for making broadband as universal as telephone service is today and a pathway for retaking the lead as a broadband leader. This project outlines the policy rationale, the pathway forward, and the 12 key steps for advancing universal broadband and modernizing the universal service program for the information age.
Many of the authors of the papers are on a panel this afternoon at TPRC, including topicssuch as
The social contract implicit in telephony universal service versus the social contract implicit in broadband universal service.
Hm, maybe Verizon could learn from that one?

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Verizon Blocks and Unblocks Pro-Choice Group

hp_naral_logo.gif Here’s what happens when you have a telco thinking the Internet is subject to its internal policies and political predilictions:
Saying it had the right to block “controversial or unsavory” text messages, Verizon Wireless last week rejected a request from Naral Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group, to make Verizon’s mobile network available for a text-message program.

But the company reversed course this morning, saying it had made a mistake.

“The decision to not allow text messaging on an important, though sensitive, public policy issue was incorrect, and we have fixed the process that led to this isolated incident,” Jeffrey Nelson, a company spokesman, said in a statement.

“It was an incorrect interpretation of a dusty internal policy,” Mr. Nelson said. “That policy, developed before text messaging protections such as spam filters adequately protected customers from unwanted messages, was designed to ward against communications such as anonymous hate messaging and adult materials sent to children.”

Mr. Nelson noted that text messaging is “harnessed by organizations and individuals communicating their diverse opinions about issues and topics” and said Verizon has “great respect for this free flow of ideas.”

— Verizon Reverses Itself on Abortion Rights Messages, By Adam Liptak, New York Times, September 27, 2007

Is the Internet a public network, or isn’t it? If it is, I don’t see why any ISP should be blocking messages based on content. (Spam is a different matter: spam is unsolicited.) There are various opinions as to what laws, if any, cover text messages. But the main point isn’t even legal. If the telco-provided network isn’t a public network, it’s not the Internet.

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Verizon Sues FCC

vzpetition.jpg Well, even though the FCC only provided half-measures to open up the 700Mhz market, Verizon thinks that’s too much and is suing the FCC because it partly unlocked cellphones:
Verizon Wireless seeks judicial review on the grounds that the Report and Order exceeds the Commission’s authority under the Communications Act of 1934, as amended, 47 U.S.C. §§ 151, eg. seq., violates the United States Constitution, violates the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 701 et. seq., and is arbitrary capricious, unsupported by substantial evidence and otherwise contrary to law.

— Verizon Wireless v. FCC, Case No. 07-1359, U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, 10 Sep 2007

Curious how the burden of proof always seems to be on anybody but the telcos and cablecos. I mean, didn’t the FCC get the memo that it was only supposed to do anything if somebody proved market failure?

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PS: Seen on SavetheInternet.com

FCC Investigating Wiretapping?

ejm_crop.jpg Now this would be a good thing if it happened:
House telecom subcommittee Chairman Edward Markey (D-Mass.) repeated his call for the Federal Communications Commission to investigate widespread allegations of telecom privacy law violations by intelligence agencies that received cooperation from telecom carriers in anti-terrorist surveillance efforts.

— Markey renews calls for FCC investigation into wiretapping, By Jeffrey Silva, RCCWireless News, September 12, 2007 – 2:13 pm EDT

That would be about as likely as Gonzales starting such an investigation.

Oh, wait:

After Markey wrote Martin in March to ask him to launch an investigation into whether telecom privacy laws have been broken, the FCC chairman wrote Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to verify that the agency could not conduct such a probe because it would violate federal laws governing disclosure of state secrets. Gonzales, who recently announced his resignation, has yet to respond to Martin.
Markey points at a number of events since his first request, such as that it’s not a secret anymore that the government has been using telcos to wiretap.

It would be good if the FCC were to represent the public interest, rather than just the telco and cableco and the administration’s interest.

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PS: Seen on Fergie’s tech blog.

Copper-Based Competitors

highlander.jpg The chutzpah:
Ed Shakin, a lawyer for Verizon, said network-sharing requirements are no longer needed in certain cities now that cable companies and other competitors have rolled out Internet and phone service. “What competitors want are artificially low prices,” he said. “It comes down to a fight about price, not availability.”

— Telecom Changes Put Competition on the Line, By Kim Hart, Washington Post Staff Writer, Thursday, September 6, 2007; Page D01

So Verizon is reducing the number of competitors, but as long as there is at least one, that’s enough, they say. Apparently Verizon thinks its competition is the Highlander: There Can Be Only One.

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Intended vs. Legal

richard-m-nixon-sized.jpg Shortly after a high level U.S. official acknowledged that telephone companies have helped the government in illegal spying, this comes out:
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration wants the power to grant legal immunity to telecommunications companies that are slapped with privacy suits for cooperating with the White House’s controversial warrantless eavesdropping program.

The authority would effectively shut down dozens of lawsuits filed against telecommunications companies accused of helping set up the program.

The vaguely worded proposal would shield any person who allegedly provided information, infrastructure or “any other form of assistance” to the intelligence agencies after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. It covers any classified communications activity intended to protect the country from terrorism.

— Bush Seeks Legal Immunity for Telecoms, By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer, August 31, 2007 – 5:02 p.m. EDT

Let’s let President Nixon sum it up:

Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.

— Richard M. Nixon interviewed by David Frost, 19 May 1977.

Yet the same administration can’t be proactive about effective regulation of first-mile Internet access for effective competition.

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Facebook as PicturePhone

Phone1.jpg Jeff Pulver has an interesting point that orty years later it’s an Internet company that delivers what a telco long ago promised:
During the past couple of weeks I have come to appreciate just how simple and easy it has become to send Video Messages to friends on Facebook. While the concept of a video phone dates back to the work of AT&T and their demonstrations at the 1964 World’s Fair, it has taken the advent of the Video application on Facebook and it’s general ease of use to get me to take the time and use it as part of my daily (Internet) life. While I have discovered how the Facebook video application can be used in various ways, my favorite is to send a personal video message to a friend.

— My Favorite Facebook Application: Video, Jeff Pulver, Jeff Pulver blog, August 27, 2007

While a telco did invent or at least publicize the videophone, forty years later it’s an Internet application that delivers something like it on a mass scale. And maybe one reason the Facebook version of it is popular is that it isn’t quite like what AT&T predicted: it isn’t interactive television. Experience indicates people don’t necessarily want to be seen live any old time regardless of their state of dress or coffee.

And more obviously, there’s no fancy equipment to buy, so the worldwide clientele is already there on the Internet. It’s the difference between distributed participation and being sold a centralized service.

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Duopoly Spies

Mike_McConnell.jpg Well, I had been waiting to post something about the telcos and domestic wiretapping until more news came out, since much of it was still hearsay. But now National Intelligence Director and former National Security Agency Director Mike McConnell has confirmed it:
Now the second part of the issue was under the president’s program, the terrorist surveillance program, the private sector had assisted us. Because if you’re going to get access you’ve got to have a partner and they were being sued. Now if you play out the suits at the value they’re claimed, it would bankrupt these companies. So my position was we have to provide liability protection to these private sector entities.

— Transcript: Debate on the foreign intelligence surveillance act, By Chris Roberts, ©El Paso Times, Article Launched: 08/22/2007 01:05:57 AM MDT

Ryan Singel points out in Wired’s Threat Level blog that this is even though the same McConnell signed a sworn declaration in April saying to reveal that NSA and Verizon had such a relationship “would cause exceptionally grave harm to the national security.” Continue reading →

Freedom to Degrade

closed.png BT made an interesting presentation at an IETF meeting in which it described a spectrum whose endpoints are
  • demand side — freedom to degrade others
  • …
  • supply side — freedom to degrade competitors

— re-ECN architectural intent by Bob Briscoe, UCL, BT, 68th IETF, Unofficial Birds of a Feather (non-BoF), Prague, 21 Mar 2007

My, freedom is so degrading. Continue reading →