The Federal Communications Commission’s chairman delivered a
tough message to cable and broadband executives Wednesday, saying a lack of
competition in their industry has hurt consumers.
The
chairman, Tom Wheeler, said that the F.C.C. intended to address the problem by
writing tough new rules to enforce so-called net neutrality, preventing big
broadband and cable companies from blocking access to innovative new
technologies and start-ups that might emerge as competitors.
In
addition, Mr. Wheeler told the group that he would use the agency’s federal
authority to override state laws that restrict municipalities from offering
inexpensive broadband service to residents. Cable companies have aggressively
funded efforts to put those laws in place.
The
aggressive stance by Mr. Wheeler represents his most vigorous attempt yet to
convince both consumers and the industry he regulates that he intends to
closely watch and protect open access to the Internet.
It comes as the F.C.C. has faced vigorous criticism and lobbying over net neutrality and the effect that a
proposed merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable would have on cable and
broadband competition. A combined Comcast-Time Warner Cable would control about
40 percent of the broadband market in the United States, and the leverage it
would have in the industry will be one of main factors the F.C.C. will study as
it considers whether to approve the merger.
“For
many parts of the communications sector, there hasn’t been as much competition
as consumers and innovation deserve,” Mr. Wheeler said at the annual meeting of
the National Cable and Telecommunications Association. That echoed his
statement on the F.C.C.’s blog on Tuesday that “there remains a
shortfall in adequate broadband competition.”
Those
statements represent the first time that Mr. Wheeler has gone beyond
encouraging competition in the broadband business to definitively stating that
he finds it lacking.
Consumer
groups and other critics have accused Mr. Wheeler of being soft on the industry
in part because he formerly was head of the very trade association he was
addressing Wednesday. But at that time, Mr. Wheeler said, cable was the
insurgent technology rather than the incumbent. Now, he said, both his and the
industry’s responsibilities are different.
“As
a result of the importance of our broadband networks, our society has the right
to demand highly responsible performance from those who operate those
networks,” Mr. Wheeler said.
In
addition, he said, “as chairman of the F.C.C., I do not intend to allow
innovation to be strangled by the manipulation of the most important network of
our time, the Internet.”
The address came just two weeks before the F.C.C. will
release for public comment a first draft of Mr. Wheeler’s new open Internet
rules. That will be the third time the F.C.C. has attempted to outline
principles for a free and open Internet. Two earlier attempts were struck down
by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Click here for the full
article in the New York Times.