|
AHGA Home
| |
|
June 15, 2007
Chairman Kevin Martin
Commissioners Michael Copps
Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein
Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate
Commissioner Robert McDowell
Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street, SW
Washington, DC 20554
Re: WC Docket No. 07-52 |
Dear FCC Chairman and Commissioners:
The American Homeowners Grassroots Alliance (AHGA), in protecting this
nation’s 75 million homeowners, works to advance public policies that
promote home ownership and support homeowners. Internet-based technology
is of growing importance to homeowners, to our economy, and to the
environment.
Today 80% of home buyers use the Internet in their home search process.
There is a fast growing U.S. trend towards teleworking – both
telecommuting from home and the creation of home-based
technology-centric businesses. Homeowners and other consumers are also
increasingly using the Internet for everything from paying bills to
ordering products and services. The Internet is also an important tool
in the K-college educational process. Developments in telemedicine will
soon make it possible for homeowners with chronic illnesses to remain in
their homes while their health is monitored remotely 24/7 through
wireless medical monitoring devises. This will help reduce our nation’s
spiraling medical costs. Many of these trends are also helping to take
many vehicles off the road, lessening pressure on the nation’s
transportation infrastructure and reducing vehicular pollution and
global warming.
For these reasons we commend the FCC for this Notice of Inquiry. AHGA
strongly supports the Commission’s 2005 Internet Policy Statement
containing four principles intended to protect consumers’ access to the
lawful online content of their choice, and to foster the creation,
adoption and use of Internet broadband content, applications, and
services. These four principles concisely define the essence of a free,
open, and neutral Internet. Assuring that these principles continue to
be adhered to through aggressive enforcement when and if necessary is
the most important role that the FCC can play in maintaining the
vitality and potential of the Internet.
We also commend the FCC for assuring that parties to proposed mergers
have recognized and agree to those principles. As the technology and the
marketplace changes rapidly it is appropriate that the FCC continue to
closely monitor them so as to be prepared to move quickly and forcefully
should these principles be violated. It is also appropriate, given the
rapid evolution of the Internet/Internet applications, that the FCC
continue to solicit public comment on whether expansion or modification
of those four principles is necessary to provide the necessary consumer
protections in a dynamic Internet environment.
From the perspective of American homeowners, the most serious current
challenges regarding the Internet are twofold. The first is ongoing and
blatant anticompetitive practices of certain Internet content providers,
and the second is the looming capacity challenge being created by the
exponential increase in bandwidth demand.
Examples of the former are the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust
Division’s current lawsuit against the National Association of Realtors
regarding industry rules that limit the Internet dissemination of
listings of homes for sale. Both the DoJ and the Federal Trade
Commission have also instituted lawsuits against multiple listing
services (MLSs) that limit the Internet dissemination of some of their
listings of homes for sale. MLSs are local or regionally-based
organizations that disseminate databases of homes for sale and are, in
most cases, owned and managed by real estate brokers in their area. It
is important that the federal and state competition agencies and the
FCC, to the extent that it is empowered, fully investigate and
aggressively enforce our antitrust and competition laws to stop
companies who are currently clearly using their market power to limit
competition on the Internet.
It is also important to recognize that there are and will be more
battles between corporate giants over Internet consumer mindshare, and
that those companies will seek, in the name of consumer protection and
network neutrality, to enlist support of federal regulatory bodies in
helping them expand their market share. As various business interests
have sought to define “network neutrality” from the perspective of their
own business interests, the term has come to have very different
definitions to different parties. For that reason it no longer has a
commonly accepted definition. Rather than trying to serve as an
arbitrator for the appropriate definition of “network neutrality”, a
more constructive role for the FCC and other federal regulatory agencies
should be to focus on the best interests of consumers through the
consistent enforcement of a comprehensive set of clearly stated
principles that protect consumer’s interests, regardless of which
companies are either benefited or disadvantaged by the FCC’s actions.
The exponential increase in bandwidth demand is posing a looming
challenge to continued expansion of broadband access and to broadband
speed and affordability. By 2010, 20 typical households will generate as
much traffic as the entire internet moved in 1995, according to John
Chambers, CEO of Cisco. The many new data-rich content sources and
applications are greatly benefiting homeowners and other consumers, but
they clearly point to the urgent need for new national policies to
encourage the expanded capacity, wider availability, and affordability
of broadband. Although the rapid expansion of broadband adoption clearly
demonstrates that it continues to provide an increasingly valuable and
affordable service to many consumers, there are clearly segments of the
population for whom broadband affordability and/or access remains a
serious challenge. For these reasons policies should implemented to help
assure that this very rapid and very beneficial expansion of Internet
traffic, which some have termed the “exaflood”, does not become a
barrier to the continued rapid expansion of broadband access and to
broadband speed and affordability..
Ensuring an Internet that can handle the exponential increase in
bandwidth demand is essential for American homeowners, our economy and
our environment. We believe that Congressional tax incentives or
subsidies to underserved consumers and/or to encourage network platform
providers, broadband Internet access service providers, other broadband
transmission providers, Internet backbone providers, content and
application service providers to increase their infrastructure
investments will be key to expanding broadband deployment, speed, and
affordability. Support for federal research to expand alternative
broadband technologies can also increase the number of competitors and
allay concerns about market concentration. For its part the FCC should
also seek ways within its scope of authority to encourage faster
broadband deployment and increase its affordability.
Policymakers should also take aggressive actions to protect privacy,
reduce spam, and stave off viruses, worms, or other “hack attacks” that
injure consumers, consume bandwidth, and/or disrupt networks and
interfere with emergency response. These actions should include stronger
criminal penalties and increased enforcement as well encouraging the
development of technologies that offer similar protections.
At the same time, while remaining vigilant in assuring that the four
principles contained in the Commission’s 2005 Internet Policy Statement
continue to be adhered to, the FCC should be wary in promulgating
regulations intended to prevent perceived potential problems that as yet
remain hypothetical. The regulatory process is imperfect and
well-intended regulations often fall short of their goals, and in some
cases can be counterproductive.
Since both are often unavoidable, regulations intended to prevent
potential problems that may never materialize could in many cases
increase costs to consumers and/or otherwise create more harm than good.
In the case of broadband regulations that address problems that do not
exist today, the regulations themselves may perversely discourage or
foreclose future innovations and capacity investments that benefit
consumers without offering offsetting benefits. It would be a loss to
consumers if the development of a very useful potential new service or
application were unintentionally foreclosed by a regulation intended to
stop something very different from occurring. For example, if it were
possible for consumers to purchase from their choice of either content
or a broadband provider an occasional very high speed download of a
movie or other content on an a la carte basis, without having to
subscribe to a faster and more expensive broadband service, those
consumers would benefit. As long as the broadband access speeds of other
consumers were not slowed significantly by this new service there
appears little support for a regulation that would restrict those
choices.
The overall vitality and competitiveness of the Internet today is a
credit to the FCC’s ongoing efforts to develop and assure adherence to
the Commissions four principles. We commend you for your work to date
and urge the FCC to maintain its vigilance and commitment in the future.
Sincerely,
Bruce N. Hahn
President
|
|