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from: Consumer Affairs

Net Neutrality Opponents Step Up PR Blitz
Telco Tubbies Dust off their Disinformation Machines

By Martin H. Bosworth
ConsumerAffairs.Com

September 20, 2006

In the face of an unexpected grassroots campaign to support the principle of equal Internet access for all, telecommunications and cable firms are pulling out all the stops to ensure that legislation supporting their desires gets through Congress this year.

Although a massive update to existing telecom law passed the House of Representatives, a similar bill is currently stalled in the Senate.

Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee and author of the bill, has been unable to garner the 60 votes needed for passage.

With less than two weeks remaining in the legislative calendar, if the bill does not make it to the floor, Stevens has signaled that it would be scuttled and divided into separate pieces of legislation. Those different bills would be attached to appropriations bills or saved till after the elections.

The hottest point of contention has been net neutrality, with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) signaling that he would filibuster any bill that was brought to the Senate floor without strong protections for net neutrality.

Other Senators have proposed separate bills that enshrine the right of equal access to Internet content and are pushing to get them on the docket.

In response, the Senate Commerce Committee recently published a poll that claimed the majority of Americans did not support net neutrality.

The poll, conducted by professional polling groups and sponsored by Verizon, asked questions of consumers that could be charitably described as biased.

When asking about net neutrality, for example, the poll phrased its question in this manner:

"Which of the following two items do you think is the most important to you:

Delivering the benefits of new TV and video choice so consumers will see increased competition and lower prices for cable TV
OR
Enhancing Internet neutrality by barring high speed internet providers from offering specialized services like faster speed and increased security for a fee?"

Unsurprisingly, 66 percent of the respondents voted to support cable and TV competition, which Sen. Stevens claimed was proof that Americans did not support net neutrality. However, the same poll showed that 91 percent of the respondents did not understand what net neutrality was.

It's not the first time the Senate Commerce Committee has openly advertised telecom companies' positions before.

IP Democracy's Cynthia Brumfield criticized it for publishing a brochure that, in her words, "reads like it was written by AT&T" on the committee Web site. "This brochure is nothing short of [lobbyist] collateral and appears to have been professionally designed," she said.

Meanwhile, a group of tech companies converged on the Capitol to hold a press conference announcing they supported the Stevens telecom bill and that it was "too soon" for any serious regulation or law dealing with net neutrality.

Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) joined them to say that his constituents are demanding "much-needed cable rate relief" that could be provided by the telecommunications legislation.

Rush, a primary sponsor of the House bill, has been criticized for accepting over $1 million in contributions from AT&T for an unfinished community center in his district while voting to oppose amendments to the House bill that supported net neutrality.

Major network builders such as Cisco, Nortel, and Qualcomm wrote Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Democratic leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to demand a quick passage of the Senate telecom bill.

Companies such as Cisco are pushing high-level network systems that can prioritize traffic to certain customers over others, which net neutrality supporters say will lead to a "tiered" Internet system where the richest clients and content providers get the best service.

The telecom companies are pushing to develop advanced fiber-to-the-home Internet connections, and require both huge influxes in capital and evangelical faith from investors to pull it off.

In order to pay for these new projects, companies such as AT&T and Time Warner Cable have openly discussed the idea of charging Internet content providers such as Google and Yahoo additional fees to host their content online.

Major content providers already pay millions of dollars per year for access to the Internet. The additional fees would be a hardship for larger providers and would put smaller independent sites at an extreme disadvantage.

While large companies like Google could presumably afford new fees, small businesses and individual entrepreneurs would be locked out of high-speed services, and would be consigned to the "slow lane" of Internet access.