Free Press Proposes New Direction for U.S. Broadband Policy

WASHINGTON -- Today, Free Press released Dismantling Digital Deregulation: Toward a National Broadband Strategy, a comprehensive, data-driven analysis of the failed policies at the root of America's broadband decline. As the Federal Communications Commission develops a national broadband plan, the new report offers concrete recommendations for getting America's Internet policy back on track.

"America's broadband failures are the result of policy failures -- and the blame falls squarely on the FCC's shoulders," said S. Derek Turner, Free Press research director and author of the report. "The FCC predicted a future of broadband competition, and then regulated as if it were already here. While promising consumer benefits, it tore down consumer protections. Digital deregulation reduced the broadband revolution to broadband mediocrity."

Read Dismantling Digital Deregulation: https://www.freepress.net/sites/default/files/2018-05/Dismantling_Digital_Deregulation.pdf

The report measures the FCC's broadband policies over the past eight years against the goals of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 -- a blueprint for promoting competition, openness and access. It found that the FCC ignored this blueprint with deregulatory decisions that consistently favored short-term industry interests over the long-term goal of universal broadband. As a result, consumers have been left with higher prices, slower speeds and a broadband market with few choices.

The FCC is required by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to produce a national broadband plan by Feb. 17, 2010. To reverse America's digital decline, the report offers the following recommendations:

• Review every major FCC decision since the 1996 Act and reverse those that failed to promote broadband competition, openness and access. Congress should aid this process with a series of oversight hearings.


• Develop a data-driven standard to identify local areas where broadband providers are abusing their market power, and use the tools in the 1996 Act to promote competition.


• Expand and codify the FCC's "Internet Policy Statement" into permanent Net Neutrality rules. Congress should pass a Net Neutrality law to place these protections in the Communications Act.


• Reclassify broadband as a "telecommunications service," which will allow the FCC to promote competition by reinstating open access rules where appropriate.


• Transition the Universal Service Fund from supporting telephone service to supporting broadband infrastructure. Congress should aid this transition through oversight and legislation to provide a clear path for FCC action.


• Produce an honest assessment of whether broadband is being deployed to all Americans in a timely fashion, as required by the 1996 Act.


• Conduct a thorough review of policies governing competition and pricing in the "special access" and "middle-mile" or "enterprise" markets -- the broadband lines that connect cell phone towers and local area networks to the Internet.


• Open more of the public airwaves to unlicensed use and promote shared spectrum for both low-power urban and high-power rural uses. Congress should instruct the FCC and the NTIA to identify spectrum that could be utilized.

Dismantling Digital Deregulation found that countries with open access policies had nearly double the broadband penetration and faster speeds for lower prices than countries without such policies. Analysis of the impact of the FCC's decisions demonstrates that eliminating open access did not accelerate U.S. broadband deployment, as industry proponents claimed it would, but it did virtually wipe out third-party broadband competition.

"Digital deregulation failed," Turner said. "It's time to chart a dramatically different course with a national broadband plan that is bold, comprehensive and ambitious. The new FCC should avoid the errors of the past and return to the broadband blueprint crafted by Congress."

Read Dismantling Digital Deregulation: https://www.freepress.net/sites/default/files/2018-05/Dismantling_Digital_Deregulation.pdf