Back Door May Open Net To Regs
February 19, 1999
Inter@ctive Week via NewsEdge Corporation : The U.S. Federal Communications
Commission has sworn with its right hand not to regulate the Internet. But is its
left hand laying the groundwork to do that very thing?
That question is met with everything from grave concern to mockery by FCC
players.
Chairman William Kennard and his colleagues have chimed in with the "don't
regulate" consensus, which, for example, has protected Internet commerce from
taxation and Internet service providers from paying the same access charges to
local phone companies levied on long-distance carriers.
"Regulation," of course, is in the beholder's eyes. Internet companies happily
accept $10 billion to $12 billion in annual government subsidies, or "beneficial
regulation," says Scott Cleland, of the Legg Mason Wood Walker securities firm.
Meanwhile, though, the Net impinges ever more forcefully on matters in which the
commission (www.fcc.gov) takes a strong interest.
A phone-to-phone long-distance call via the Internet walks and quacks much like
a conventional call; the question is how long the Internet telephony industry
should keep warding off comparable rules and tolls. Last summer, the FCC told
Congress it had to consider that question.
In October 1998, the commission took up the nature of Digital Subscriber Line
connections -- high-speed data access using ordinary copper phone lines -- and
decided they were inherently interstate, giving the FCC regulatory jurisdiction.
Now pending is a companion case concerning hundreds of millions of dollars per
year in annual "reciprocal compensation" obligations from the Bells and GTE to
competitive carriers for completing dial-up calls to Internet service providers. All
indications are that the commission will decide these calls, too, are interstate,
for regulatory purposes -- again giving the FCC jurisdiction.
And Bell competitors and advocacy groups want the commission to force
cable-modem service open to competing Internet providers. The FCC has decided
not to do so for now, but the issue isn't dead.
The commission is treading lightly, but these cases have antennae quivering. "It
terrifies me," says Paul Misener, chief of staff for Commissioner Harold
Furchtgott-Roth, one of two Republicans on the five-member FCC.
Former Chairman Reed Hundt says the commission "can steer clear" of Net
regulation, but he admits he's concerned it won't. "The Internet is an empty
space," he says. "Sometimes people think it's a vacuum and they try to suck
regulations into it."
But an aide to one of the FCC's Democratic members, who spoke on condition of
anonymity, scoffed at the worries. The GTE (www.gte.com) case "is not over the
information service, the Internet. It is over the communication services that are
used to access the Internet." And contending that the commission shouldn't
regulate telephony that happens to use a technology called Internet Protocol, he
scoffs, is like saying the health department shouldn't be allowed to inspect
sanitation at an eatery called Jim's Internet Pizza Parlor.
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[Copyright 1999, Ziff Wire] |
