Markey Urges VoIP Industry to Fight for Broadband Network Access
BOSTON -- In the midst of debates over VoIP jurisdiction, a more important issue of access by VoIP providers to broadband networks was “perhaps misplaced in the hierarchy of priorities for the independent VoIP companies out there,” said Rep. Markey, ranking Democrat on the House Subcommittee on Telecom & Internet. “The issues of state preemption or taxes or fees or regulatory requirements pale in comparison to the issue of whether VoIP providers have equal, nondiscriminatory access to consumers,” he told the VON’s Telecom Policy Summit here.
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In what some in the audience called “a wake-up call,” Markey urged the VoIP industry “to engage now in discussions and debates over these issues and to make your interests well-known on Capitol Hill and the FCC.” He said in a few years “it may matter little that the VOIP industry has won yet another reprieve from certain fees or taxes if it is systematically stuck with second-rate connectivity, or VoIP providers are routinely denied access to certain networks or certain network speeds or functionality.”
Markey said he was “greatly concerned that the Powell FCC’s vision for our broadband future is a Bell company- cable company duopoly.” He said such approach was “a defeatist vision for America’s broadband future. It won’t lead to robust, fiercely competitive price competition, or heightened service quality, or the rapid deployment of new technologies and services.” Markey said competition could come from alternative facilities-based providers, such as wireless, satellite or broadband over power line providers, in the long term -- “but many of these alternatives won’t have sufficient facilities into residences, or will be forced to connect into the duopolists’ ‘last mile’ or back office, or won’t ubiquitously deploy their networks anyway. But these alternatives should all be strongly supported by policy- makers.”
Separately, Matt Brill, aide to FCC Comr. Abernathy, said the FCC didn’t try to “end access to the physical layer,” but rather to “strike a balance and encourage investment in next generation facilities.” Saying the Commission had taken several steps to promote competition from alternative providers, “I don’t think the Commission resigned itself to a duopoly.” But Jessica Rosenworcel, aide to FCC Comr. Copps, said “the facts show a duopoly,” with cable providers having 65% of the market. “So, for alternative providers all that’s left is 1.3%,” she said, and access to the last mile is eroding over time.
“The fights to safeguard the prospects for economical, facilities-based competition are battles for the VoIP industry as well,” Markey said. He emphasized that the VoIP industry had “clear common cause with the remaining facilities-based competitors to the incumbents, as well as with emerging newcomers. The best way to keep the incumbents honest is to support the rules and laws that ensure that there are facilities-based competitors out there too… As much as we hope and wish that Comcast and Verizon, for example, are successful in deploying VoIP, we need more that just those two companies competing.”
On jurisdiction, Markey urged regulators to use the wireless model as a “guide to [VoIP] policy.” He said VoIP service was “analogous to wireless service and the policy blueprint Congress chose to nurture the growth of the wireless industry may serve as an appropriate guide to policy in this case as well.” Markey said it was “important to recognize” that while Congress preempted states on rate regulation, “it reserved for local authorities the right, but not the obligation, to oversee ’terms and conditions’ of the service… In my view, this approach has worked well because wireless services have not been subjected to dozens of different rate regulations, yet important societal needs are achieved and advanced through rules developed as the technology itself developed over time and gained acceptance with consumers in the marketplace.”
“We desperately need the competition that VoIP can provide to the incumbent telephone companies,” Markey said. He said the regulatory uncertainty created by the FCC in its local competition rules, as well as “efforts in Congress to similarly undermine the competitive underpinnings of the Telecommunications Act,” had led to withdrawal of competitive companies from many markets. He strongly criticized “the Powell FCC” for being “ahistorical in this regard because prior to Chairman Powell’s tenure there had largely been a consensus among both Democrats and Republicans that we would utilize the law and the FCC’s power to pry open historically closed markets to entrepreneurial entry and innovation. There was also a general consensus that policy-makers needed to not be timid in embracing disruptive change, and to stick to our guns in cracking open these markets.”