On 11/20/2014 12:07 AM, Robert wrote:
> Ah the days of Covad, Northpoint, etc.. Racing to get high speed
> internet to needy customers on VC dollars not knowing that behind their
> backs a quick regulation change would make all that easy pickings for
> the incumbents... Those who do not learn from history are doomed to
> repeat it.. Fred, please gaze into your magic ball of the past and give
> us a clue to our future? Are our collective necks starting to hover
> over the ax block?
Ah yes, the days of Covad and Northpoint. It was fun to watch them
fail. This wasn't however the FCC's doing. The crazy speculators of
the day ("investor" is too kind a term for them) were dumping money
where it was obviously impossible to make a profit, hoping a greater
fool would bail them out. When there were six CLECs selling SDSL (aimed
at business, full loop) in a suburban CO that didn't have a lot of
businesses in it, you knew they were failures. I wrote about this in my
book The Great Telecom Meltdown. One thing I like about the WISP
business is that the participants don't have other people's money to
waste so they're run like actual businesses.
Of course the FCC came along and killed off most of the surviving real
businesses a couple of years later. Their rule changes were justified
by predictions that, predictably to us, never came true. It was a farce;
SBC (n/k/a AT&T) and Verizon had that FCC in their pocket and they
weren't even trying to look fair.
As to the crystal ball gazing: I think the WISPs will survive, and I
credit WISPA and its legal and FCC teams for a lot of this. The
wireline ISP and CLEC businesses never had good organizations behind
them -- there were CLEC groups made up of the big guys who mostly did
resale/platform, but nobody lobbying for the smaller and more
data-oriented CLECs. WISPA literally gets a seat at the table (Steve
Coran last week, for instance) so our needs are heard, and on record
(which matters come appeal time -- no new facts allowed, but you can
mine the record).
My actual forecast is that Wheeler, in a few months, will come out with
a cockamamie plan that tries to regulate the Internet itself using
Section 706 authority, though he might touch Title II. It is likely to
not directly impose common carrier regulation (Title II) on WISPs, but
it might impact their upstream ISPs. It might make things a little
difficult for some WISPs but not be fatal. In any case it will be
appealed. Then after the 2016 election, the Court will throw out the
bulk of it, noting that Section 706 is not a grant of authority after
all (this was a legal issue they overlooked in the last case, where
Verizon failed to point that out) and that Title II was aimed at common
carriers, not information service providers, and the FCC will have
failed to demonstrate that ISPs are common carriers when engaging in
peering. Thus no Title II there. (Title II is absolutely legal to apply
to the access wire of otherwise-regulated carriers, at the lower layers,
and the DC Circuit said so in January. Tom will not go there. If he
were to go there, he probably would not touch WISPs -- my Comment gave
him a good way to draw that line without saying "WISP" out loud needing
to define the term.)
In other words, the FCC will write convoluted rules *designed to be
overturned*, so that the next FCC (each president gets his/her own
chairman) will be handed the issue again, and have to figure out how to
kick the can down the road another 4/8 years, hoping it all goes away.
> On 11/19/2014 08:32 PM, Faisal Imtiaz wrote:
>> Chuckle :)
>>
>> You all don't know who Fred is.... :)
>>
>> He has a weee bit of experience in these matters..... :)
>>
>> I am reading this discussion about Title II and having a dejavu !!!
>>
>> What you all see coming to our door steps in form of Title II via the FCC,
>> is pretty similar to what the we saw about 5 to 10 years ago on the wireline
>> side.. there it was 'de-regulation' or Forbearance from Title II
>> regulations.....It is rather interesting and comical (sarcasm) to see the
>> 'regulatory pendulum' swinging in the opposite direction...I wish there is a
>> way to turn all the arguments presented and accepted by the FCC at that time
>> to grant forbearance could be re-presented to them....
>>
>> And yes, Fred is a subject matter expert on Wireline Regulation /FCC...
>> (Think of him like a Steve Coran of the wireline world).
>>
>> :)
>>
>>
>> Faisal Imtiaz
>> Snappy Internet & Telecom
>> 7266 SW 48 Street
>> Miami, FL 33155
>> Tel: 305 663 5518 x 232
>>
>> Help-desk: (305)663-5518 Option 2 or Email: supp...@snappytelecom.net
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Eric Tykwinski" <eric-l...@truenet.com>
>>> To: "WISPA General List" <wireless@wispa.org>
>>> Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2014 7:10:11 PM
>>> Subject: Re: [WISPA] Quick Question: Title II, for or against?
>>>
>>> Fred,
>>>
>>> It’s a little late, but damn, that was a good description of the problem.
>>> I’m hoping and just hoping, that Wheeler understands exactly what the
>>> problem
>>> really is.
>>> Everyone thinks Title II is a hammer both on the ILEC and the public
>>> activist
>>> side,
>>> but in reality I hope that the FCC does have a bit more common sense and see
>>> that competition is what will lead to the public good in the long run.
>>>
>>> Now if the lawyers can actually come up with something that will legally
>>> stick, well that’s up in the air.
>>>
>>> Sincerely,
>>>
>>> Eric Tykwinski
>>> TrueNet, Inc.
>>> P: 610-429-8300
>>> F: 610-429-3222
>>>
>>>> On Nov 19, 2014, at 6:04 PM, Kevin Sullivan <kevin.sulli...@alyrica.net>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Wow, that was well thought out. I'd say that's a pretty good assessment!
>>>>
>>>> Kevin
>>>>
>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>> From: "Fred Goldstein" <f...@interisle.net>
>>>> To: <wireless@wispa.org>
>>>> Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2014 8:26 AM
>>>> Subject: Re: [WISPA] Quick Question: Title II, for or against?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> On 11/19/2014 8:49 AM, Drew Lentz wrote:
>>>>>> I put up a quick poll, results will be shared and are anonymous.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3R6YTH9
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm curious to see what the percentages are between those that support
>>>>>> and those that don't support the Title II argument. I've been trying
>>>>>> to get a good feel for who would and wouldn't like it (mostly it seems
>>>>>> carriers love it, web services hate it.) I have a feeling WISPs might
>>>>>> be on the "hate it" side, but I'm interested to find out. Thanks for
>>>>>> your answer and have a fantastic day!
>>>>>>
>>>>> You asked the question very poorly, so there is no one correct answer.
>>>>>
>>>>> "Broadband" is an adjective. You don't regulate adjectives, you regulate
>>>>> nouns. Broadband what? This is the fallacy of today's public discourse
>>>>> -- they are using this adjective as a noun without the noun, so
>>>>> different people use it to have different referents.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think I'm in pretty close harmony with the WISPA position here, given
>>>>> that Steve Coran chose me to help him give his NN talk in Vegas last
>>>>> month based on my detailed Comments on the topic to the FCC. And I've
>>>>> been writing and Commenting on this for years. Several years ago I told
>>>>> the FCC that they were using this adjective as a noun, but that they
>>>>> could separate the two primary implied nouns by using a Spanish-language
>>>>> convention. El Broadband would refer to the physical facility, the high
>>>>> speed transmission medium. La Broadband would refer to the content of
>>>>> the facility, including Internet service delivered over it. (If you
>>>>> don't know Spanish, "el radio" is a device and "la radio" is a
>>>>> program.) But in lawyer terms, El Broadband is the telecommunications
>>>>> component, and La Broadband is the information service riding atop it.
>>>>>
>>>>> The reason NN is a Thing is that the FCC, in 2005, threw away the law
>>>>> (TA96) and decided that telephone companies could stop being common
>>>>> carriers, stop providing ISPs with El Broadband (raw DSL), and simply
>>>>> sell La Broadband as a vertically-integrated service with exclusive
>>>>> access to their formerly common-carrier facilities. So typical
>>>>> consumers in cities went from having many ISP choices (one cable company
>>>>> and many ISPs available via DSL) to two (one each cable and DSL).
>>>>>
>>>>> The public reaction to this was, understandably, rather negative. They
>>>>> recognized that they could be screwed by their cable and telco
>>>>> duopolists (monopolists in many areas, and more in the future as the
>>>>> ILECs abandon their copper plant without replacing it). But not
>>>>> recognizing the difference between a "network" (what carries IP) and an
>>>>> "internetwork" (the Internet itself, content slung across many
>>>>> networks), they demanded "network neutrality" referring to the ISP
>>>>> function itself. And the FCC obliged, being basically political, by
>>>>> proposing the regulation of Internet services, but not regulating the
>>>>> actual telecom provided by the monopolists.
>>>>>
>>>>> So I'm in favor of applying Title II to the actual telecommunications
>>>>> component of broadband services provided by incumbents, and those using
>>>>> rivalrous facilities (those that exclude others, including pole
>>>>> attachments, conduits, and exclusively-licensed frequencies). But those
>>>>> who only compete with incumbent cable and telco, or who use
>>>>> non-rivalrous facilities and frequencies (that includes essentially all
>>>>> WISPs), would not fall under Title II whatsoever, and neither would the
>>>>> Internet backbone or anything done on the Internet itself (IP layer on
>>>>> up, but this does not refer to IP-based voice services provided by
>>>>> facility owners).
>>>>>
>>>>> So I'm in favor of Title II for some broadband stuff (where it opens
>>>>> monopoly wire to competitive ISPs) but not others (where it regulates
>>>>> the Internet or WISPs). Got it? That's why the question is wrong.
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Fred R. Goldstein k1io fred "at" interisle.net
>>>>> Interisle Consulting Group
>>>>> +1 617 795 2701
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Wireless mailing list
>>>>> Wireless@wispa.org
>>>>> http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless
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--
Fred R. Goldstein k1io fred "at" interisle.net
Interisle Consulting Group
+1 617 795 2701
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