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In this edition of Views and News, ETI is pleased to provide our take on a recent proposal by the Chairman of the FCC to reclassify Broadband Internet Access as a Title II service. We also offer key insights on the economic impact of the current telecommunications market structure, and showcase recent ETI testimony that resulted in the second largest jury verdict award in California in 2009.
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Why Broadband Internet Access Should
be Reclassified as a Title II Telecommunications Service
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In its 2005 Broadband Wireline Internet Access (BWIA) Order, the FCC, building on its earlier Cable Modem Order and the Supreme Court's Brand X decision that affirmed it, concluded that broadband Internet access service involved close integration of a telecommunications and an information service, and held that the entire integrated package should be treated as an "information service" and be entirely deregulated. The Commission reasoned at that time that it could continue to supervise the practices of Internet access providers, including their compliance with the FCC's policies regarding net neutrality, by means of its "ancillary jurisdiction" under Title I of the Communications Act. And in 2009, the FCC asserted such ancillary jurisdiction in an Order prohibiting Comcast from engaging in certain traffic management practices with respect to its Internet access customers, which the FCC determined to violate its "net neutrality" principles.
Comcast appealed, and in April 2010 the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that the FCC, having disavowed Title II regulation of even the telecommunications component of Comcast's broadband Internet access services, could not reach the network management practices at issue via the Commission's "ancillary" regulation. Aimed primarily at restoring its legal authority to enforce net neutrality requirements, the FCC has responded to the Comcast decision by announcing plans to reclassify the telecom component of broadband Internet access as a telecommunications service, subject to regulation under Title II. In that same announcement, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski sought to reassure the incumbent providers of broadband Internet access services (the ILECs and cable companies) that, were it to succeed in restoring its Title II authority over broadband Internet access, the FCC would limit its use of this authority to the enforcement of net neutrality policies and would forbear from reinstating other common carrier obligations.
Apparently not mollified by FCC assurances, the incumbents have criticized this proposed change as unsupportable revisionism. We not only disagree, but believe that the FCC had unreasonably diverged from a longstanding and well-supported legal and policy course when, in 2005, it first adopted the rationale for classifying BWIA as an information service....
Continue reading at econtech.com
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Market Structure Regulation Will Lead to Increased Competition and Stimulate Increased Investment and Jobs
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A recent ETI report, Regulation, Investment and Jobs: How Regulation of Wholesale Markets Can Stimulate Private Sector Broadband Investment and Create Jobs, demonstrates that the most powerful tool the FCC has at its disposal to advance its broadband agenda and revitalize the telecommunications industry's economic engine is competition. Contrary to RBOC claims, by returning to policies like those implemented immediately following TA96 that were intended to ensure that ILEC wholesale access facilities are ubiquitously available and fairly priced, the FCC has the opportunity to set in motion a new era of innovation, investment and job growth in the telecommunications industry. ETI does not support a return to the traditional rate of return- based regulation of the last century, but instead urges adoption of broad market structure regulations designed to ensure the most efficient use of the nation's existing and future network infrastructure....
Continue reading at econtech.com
Click here to download the entire report.
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ETI Analysis and Testimony Basis for Second Largest Jury Award in California in 2009
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In 2007 and 2008, Colin B. Weir, Senior Consultant at Economics and Technology, Inc., testified on behalf of a class of approximately 150,000 California consumers who had purchased a product called "Avacor" from Global Vision Products, Inc. The class asserted a false advertising claim against the corporation and several of its principals. In January 2008, an Alameda County, California jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff class, and awarded damages based upon the ETI testimony.
In 2009, the same plaintiff class went to trial again, this time seeking to pierce the corporate veil to impose individual liability against two shareholders of the corporation. ETI was asked once again to calculate the economic damages to the class, and Mr. Weir offered damages testimony at trial.
Continue reading at econtech.com
Click here to view Live Video of Colin B. Weir's direct and cross examination testimony in Thomas v. Global Vision Products (II)
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About ETI. Founded in 1972, Economics and Technology, Inc. is a leading research and consulting firm specializing in telecommunications regulation and policy, litigation support, taxation, service procurement, and negotiation. ETI serves a wide range of telecom industry stakeholders in the US and abroad, including telecommunications carriers, attorneys and their clients, consumer advocates, state and local governments, regulatory agencies, and large corporate, institutional and government purchasers of telecom services. |
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