ALEC Eyes IP Regulation Laws, Municipal Broadband Reservations for 2013 Priorities

ALEC’s Communications and Technology Task Force is examining “uber trends” affecting the telecom world, big changes that won’t be easy to “crystallize into model legislation,” as the heavyweight organization has often done in the past, said Private Chair Bartlett Cleland, also regional vice present and counsel to trade association TechAmerica. Each task force has a private chair, representing industry, and a public chair, representing elected officials, as well as an executive director. Cleland spoke of the transformations of mobility, IP, big data, the cloud, cybersecurity and other facets of telecom, and said ALEC is “looking to protect innovation and innovation trends,” with public and private forces working together. It’s devoting one of five subcommittees to innovation and how to “grow the tech economy in the states,” said John Stephenson, director of the Communications and Technology Task Force. One focus of the meeting was massive open online courses and new telecom-enabled models of education and health, said Public Chair Blair Thoreson, a North Dakota Republican state representative. He described significant discussion of emergency communications following Superstorm Sandy -- talk of power grid modernization, wireless and the possible need for backup power, he said. “Huge things are coming” that will “turn the whole world on its head,” Thoreson said, which ALEC should discuss even if those issues don’t lend themselves to model legislation.

Two issues that do involve ALEC models, however, are VoIP regulation and municipal broadband authority. ALEC’s model of the Advanced Voice Services Availability Act, released Monday, wants to avoid “different and possibly contradictory rules and proceedings by each of the fifty state public utility commissions” on Internet Protocol services. PUC oversight would mean “separate taxes, mandates, and government approval for any service change,” ALEC said. “Each of the states is looking how to best handle that,” Thoreson said of VoIP laws, saying he’s had conversations in North Dakota about whether such a law is appropriate. He ran in the primary election to be on the North Dakota Public Service Commission earlier this year and lost. He would still want to be “attuned to what’s going on” in different arenas of telecom, he said, even if not directly regulating those arenas. The North Dakota PSC “has a role” but shouldn’t “overreach in regulation,” he said. Stephenson described active interest in a past ALEC panel on state commissions: “This is a conversation that’s very relevant, and one that ALEC is happy to facilitate."

The model legislation resembles the VoIP law California passed this fall (CD Oct 2 p7). It’s “similar to what we have been advocating,” said Glenn Richards, executive director of the Voice on the Net Coalition. Regina Costa, National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates acting telecom director, called the ALEC model “disingenuous at best and deliberately misleading at worst": “The Internet is not a private telecommunications network.” She questioned the rhetoric, its potential effect on service quality and a state’s ability to ensure affordable and reliable networks, as was her concern with the California bill she fought against this year. Large telcos will benefit, she said, noting that major telcos and cable companies “play prominent roles in ALEC.” Institute for Local Self-Reliance Telecom Director Chris Mitchell also worries these laws would “gut consumer protections,” he said.

"There are virtually no success stories,” Cleland said of municipal broadband networks. He described “often muddled” data and questioned financial disclosures, municipalities’ expertise and community risk of financial loss, citing projects that end up being “off on the number of [projected] users by a dramatic amount.” There’s no “huge wave” pushing for municipal networks in the past year, Cleland judged, and also questioned the Chattanooga Gig network, which he acknowledged many hold as a positive example, including The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman (http://xrl.us/bn5bx6). The Tennessee project “suffers from a lot of the same disclosure issues” as other projects and isn’t clearly a success or failure, Cleland said. A spokeswoman for EPB, the electric utility that owns Chattanooga Gig, defended what she called its success, citing 46,000 connected homes and businesses, an upgraded Chattanooga bond rating and a copy of last year’s audited financial report. To say all municipal projects are failures is “objectively untrue,” said D.C. attorney Jim Baller, who has advocated for municipal networks for years and dealt with ALEC model bills (CD Nov 13 p7). He pointed to 2009 Fiber-to-the-Home Council report conclusions (http://xrl.us/bn5qaw), saying, “They should be straight-up and forthright about the facts and the true intent of their legislation.” “I think the market will respond to what the consumer wants,” Thoreson said, advocating for “a level playing field” and referring to a failed municipal venture in North Dakota. “It’s been quite disturbing to see some of these numbers,” Stephenson said. “Can we really afford this?"

Cleland pointed to North Carolina’s 2011 municipal networks law as “a pretty smart approach,” one he’s personally comfortable with. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance said in a December report defending the Wilson, N.C., project (http://xrl.us/bn5psy) the law made it the 19th state to “create barriers that essentially revoke the authority of local governments to build networks.” Mitchell, one of the authors of the December report, questioned the bill’s goals and told us “no one in North Carolina is investing in next-generation broadband” now. Under this law, “you must disclose and you must operate it as a business might,” said Cleland. “There has to be regulation but it has to be done smartly,” said Thoreson. “There is no public testimony from these guys on these bills,” said Mitchell, describing concern for how ALEC pushes bills and “secret” meetings “behind closed doors.” Thoreson defended ALEC’s process of bringing together industry and elected officials as “very important in making good policy.”

Outdated laws and regulations need to be wiped away, ALEC officials said. The task force at its November meeting approved a statement of principles that proposed updating communications laws passed prior to the 1996 Telecom Act. ALEC hasn’t formally adopted it as policy but will potentially within a few weeks, Stephenson said. Its Monday report praised apps and online education and warned against “bad actors and bureaucracy” as well as spyware and malware. “We're looking at barriers and how to bring them down,” Stephenson said.