The Federal Communication Commission’s National Broadband Plan - Adoption, Usage, and Global Impact of Broadband Technologies - page 60

own offerings over unaffiliated competitive ser-
vice providers (The Rights of Bits, 2009).
Amplifying these concerns, the chairman of the
FCC, Julius Genachowski, delivered a significant
broadband policy speech on September 21, 2009 in
which he outlined a plan to maintain the openness
of the Internet by proposing to initiate a Notice
of Proposed Rulemaking to codify the four prin-
ciples identified in the Internet Policy Statement
and to add two more to that list (Genachowski,
2009). The chairman expressed three reasons to
be concerned about whether the Internet of the
future will continue to be an open platform:

puter technology into the telecommunications
network is what regulations, if any, are necessary
to protect data processing firms from the threat
of monopoly leveraging by network operators
that may have market power in the provision of
last-mile transmission services. For over 30 years,
the FCC had generally been consistent in fashion-
ing a federal policy that actively pursued a goal
of an open telecommunications platform for the
users of the platform. The debate has manifested
itself in several ways through regulatory policies
to promote competition among ISPs, to trying to
increase competition in the last mile by mandating
network elements to be unbundled, to proposals
to protect directly end users and applications and
content providers against overt discriminatory
behavior. Until 2005, one critical element of the
openness policy included a regulatory obligation
that facilities-based wireline telecommunications
providers provide nondiscriminatory transmis-
sion access service to independent providers of
enhanced/information services, such as e-mail
service, World Wide Web searches, Internet access
providers, and voice mail service that necessar-
ily include a telecommunications service. For
instance, this regulatory mandate facilitated com-
petition in the provision of access to the Internet.
This access transmission obligation developed
as an outcome of the Computer Inquiry proceed-
ings that spanned the years 1966 to 1986. These
proceedings tried to modernize federal regula-
tory policy in an environment of rapid advances
in computer and data processing technology. In
particular, in the Computer Inquiry II proceedings,
the FCC radically revised its regulatory framework
by classifying communications services into two
mutually exclusive categories: basic services that
were subject to Title 2 regulation as outlined
in the Telecommunications Act and enhanced
services which were deemed competitive, thus,
unregulated, and subject to FCC jurisdiction under
Title 1 of the Act. The FCC was concerned that
wireline telecommunications providers of basic
service possess the ability and incentive to engage

(a) Limited competition among broadband
Internet access service providers.
(b) Economic incentives of ISPs.
(c) Explosion of traffic on the Internet
(Genachowski, 2009).

The stage is now set to investigate the role that
openness and competition can play in achieving
the nation's broadband goals. This chapter is or-
ganized as follows: The first subsection provides
a brief history of broadband deregulation in the
USA. The following subsection describes the
current economic, political, and regulatory envi-
ronment surrounding broadband issues. The final
subsection presents the opposing views of major
stakeholders on critical openness and competition
issues. The final subsection provides a conclusion
that outlines several general economic points that
should be incorporated into the FCC's National
Broadband Plan.

THE FCC ANDTHE NATIONAL
BROADBAND PLAN

Brief History of Broadband
Deregulation

A fundamental economic concern that the FCC
has addressed since the incorporation of com-