Blog - Page 69

I’m stunned the pundits aren’t discussing John Roberts’ potential impact on communications law! Seriously, I was surprised to learn he grew up in my home county in Indiana and attended a small, private, country school outside my hometown of La Porte. La Lumiere School’s other famous alum was a genius of another sort — the late comedian Chris Farley. The Wall Street Journal did report that when Roberts listed his personal investments when he became an appellate judge, among his stock holdings were Time Warner Inc. (TWX), Dell Inc. (DELL), Texas Instruments Inc. (TXN), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), and Intel Corp. (INTC). Maybe this is standard fair, but it could reflect a mild interest in technology. Also, his father was an Read More ›

Last week’s Senate Commerce Committee hearings on the digital TV spectrum transition were important in their own right. But they also got me thinking about a related telecom issue: municipal telecom networks. It now seems most parties are satisfied with a “hard date” transition of the 700 MHz band (UHF TV channels 52-69) in 2008. This means broadcasters will go all digital in a smaller spectrum band, and the vast and mostly vacant 700 MHz space will be opened up for all sorts of new technologies and services. This is a good thing, but by the time it happens, it will have been almost 20 years — twenty! — since this process began. Huge amounts of great spectrum have been Read More ›

The latest broadband deployment report from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced a 34% jump in total high-speed (broadband downstream, narrow-or broadband upstream) lines, from 28.2 to 37.9 million at year-end 2004. 35.3 million of these lines (93%) were to residential and small business users. DSL jumped 45%, from 9.5 to 13.8 million lines; cable modem lines rose less sharply, 30%, from 16.4 to 21.4 million lines. The remaining 2.7 million lines were for miscellaneous access modes, with 700,0000 fiber or powerline and 500,000 satellite. Advanced service (two-way broadband) lines rose 42%, from 23.5 to 28.2 million lines, with 26.4 million of the 28.9 million total (94%) representing residential and small business users. Advanced service thus represented 76% of all Read More ›

See this morning’s Wall Street Journal for an editorial (subscription required) on the tech stock rally and a reference to Bret Swanson and our new blog.

New York regulators issued a white paper last week examining possible “remedies” in connection with the proposed Verizon-MCI and SBC-AT&T mergers. The white paper appropriately concludes that issues associated with the Internet backbone should be addressed at the national level. The Internet is an interstate network that cannot be subject to micromanagement by the public service commissions of 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and other territories and possessions.
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It’s impossible to model the stock market with absolute certainty. But is it a coincidence that since the FCC announced a week ago it would seek some measure of deregulation for telecom companies, the technology heavy Nasdaq has risen over 4 percent? Before the Supreme Court Brand X decision and the related FCC statements, the Nasdaq had been down year-to-date about 6 percent. Now we’re close to even for the year. Our Gilder Technology Index, which is even more concentrated in technology, is up almost 6 percent in the last week. Several of my Discovery colleagues have voiced valid concerns that the Brand X case confirms and centralizes the FCC’s powers — often an ominous thing, to be sure — Read More ›

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has now offered the closest thing to a constructive and coherent broadband policy the U.S. has seen in the decade following the ’96 Telecom Act. (Reed Hundt and William Kennard had coherent, but disastrous policies.) In a statement following the Supreme Court’s Brand X decision and in a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week, Martin said the communications marketplace is vibrantly competitive and that “legacy” telecom rules should be pruned or eliminated to encourage broadband investment. This is welcome, if long overdue, news. Martin errs, however, in comparing U.S. broadband favorably with Asia. Martin lauds new FCC numbers showing rapid growth of U.S. “broadband” users — the fastest growth rate in the world, he says. The Read More ›

Discovery’s George Gilder meets with members of the Senate Republican High Tech Task Force on June 29th to discuss telecommunications reform. Clockwise from left: Gilder, U.S. Senators John Ensign (R-NV), Richard Burr (R-NC), Wayne Allard (R-CO), George Allen (R-VA), and John Thune (R-SD).

Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and Congressman Gary G. Miller (R-Calif.) have introduced the Federal Telephone Excise Tax Repeal Act of 2005 (S.321; H.R. 1898). Taxes which target communications services are one of the reasons that 15 other countries enjoyed faster broadband deployment than the U.S. on a per capita basis in 2004 (Click here to see the rankings). Eliminating this tax ought to be a high priority. Currently, the tax applies to telephone and teletypewriter services that existed in 1965 when the statute’s current definitions were enacted. Since that time, “numerous questions have arisen,” according to the IRS, concerning the applicability of the tax to newer services. The IRS issued a notice of proposed rulemaking last year in an effort Read More ›

Some have hailed last week’s Supreme Court decision in NCTA v. Brand X Internet Services as a triumph for deregulation, particularly in the wake of Chairman Kevin Martin’s subsequent statements to the press that the FCC will move quickly to establish deregulatory parity between telephone and cable companies. That’s extremely welcome news. But there’s more here than meets the eye. The Court upheld a regulatory regime in which DSL is subject to costly common carrier regulation and cable modems are not. The record showed that the decision to penalize one and reward the other is based on one set of considerations for the telephone companies (history of regulation, in effect) and another for the cable companies (contemporaneous market conditions). Arguments Read More ›