Trump Could Spell Big Trouble for Broadband, Net Neutrality

While Hillary Clinton was seen as overly-cozy with telecom in her own right, new President elect Donald Trump is already laying the ground work for an administration that could spell major trouble for broadband consumers, broadband competition, and the nation's new net neutrality rules. Trump has made it clear he vehemently opposes net neutrality, despite repeatedly making it clear he's not entirely certain what net neutrality even is.

Meanwhile, Trump has selected Jeffrey Eisenach to head his telecom transition team

Eisenach is an ally of the telecom industry that has spent years at industry-funded think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute assailing current FCC boss Tom Wheeler and nearly every consumer-friendly policy the FCC has enacted in recent years. His track record as a obfuscated ally of industry suggests he's very likely to appoint the kind of revolving door regulators that prioritize incumbent ISP interests.

While many had their doubts about Wheeler given his own lobbying past for the wireless and cable industries, he wound up being arguably one of the most consumer and competition friendly FCC chairmen in the history of the FCC, fighting for net neutrality, broadband privacy rules, a higher 25 Mbps definition for broadband, municipal broadband, and cable box competition.

That said, Wheeler was a bit of an enigma for the sector and a surprise victory for consumers. Eisenach, in contrast, has a well-documented history of intense opposition to nearly all of the positions Wheeler and consumer advocates support.

With an cozy industry insider like Eisenach helping to pick his replacement, we're more than likely going to witness a return to older iterations of the FCC (like Democrat Julius Genachowski and Republican Michael Powell) where the agency went well out of its way to avoid upsetting AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and Charter.

As such, it's likely that Wheeler's current plans to impose new basic privacy rules on broadband, as well as his already-troubled attempts to bring competition to the cable box, will likely be gutted in one way or another. And according to Dish CEO Charlie Ergen, he also sees a likely reversal -- or at least a refusal to enforce -- the agency's net neutrality rules:»twitter.com/shalini/stat ··· 7864584



Meanwhile, there's every indication that ISPs are already heating up their ground game in an attempt to also walk back the FCC's decision to reclassify ISPs as common carriers, which gave the agency the legal authority to enforce net neutrality in the first place.

In an e-mail being circulated to news outlets, the telecom-industry backed lobbying group the Internet Innovation Alliance is already urging this new FCC to stop doing its job, and return to its more familiar role of being a beurocratic yes man to the telecom sector's biggest players. That would likely come in the form of a total Communications Act rewrite by the GOP-controlled House and Senate.

"The first order of business for the new FCC should be a return to the bi-partisan light regulatory oversight of broadband launched during the Clinton administration," says former Senator Rick Boucher in the e-mail, now working at Sidley Austin, a law firm employed by AT&T.

"The decision to treat broadband as an information service unleashed a wave of investment in internet infrastructure that enabled our communications network to become the envy of the world," claims Boucher. "That progress has been undermined by the Commission's decision to treat broadband as a telecommunications service with regulatory requirements designed for the monopoly era of rotary telephones. Few regulatory changes would do more to promote investment and a stronger U.S. economy than a return to the time-honored light regulatory regime for broadband."

Right, but if you know telecom parlance at all, the industry's definition of "light regulatory regime" means to do nothing whatsoever to protect consumers or small competing businesses, instead making the protection of incumbent ISP revenues the top priority. While "deregulation" (which in telecom really means letting ISPs effectively write the law) may work in healthy markets, in telecom where the last mile isn't competitive, history shows us time and time again this only tends to compound existing problems.

And while Hillary Clinton may have been a step backward in her own way, she made it clear she planned to extend many of Wheeler's existing policies on broadband privacy and competition. In stark contrast, Eisenach's appointment alone suggests Trump could have a devastating impact on a broadband sector in desperate need of continued, serious reform, and an FCC that had only just started to actually value consumer welfare and a need for increased sector competition.