Medium.com: Bruce Kushnick Blog: WARNING: 30+ FCC Actions in One Year to Slice & Dice States’ Rights & Consumer Protections.

[Charles Sherwood]

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From: Bruce Kushnick <br...@newnetworks.com>
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Subject: WARNING: 30+ FCC Actions in One Year to Slice & Dice States’ Rights & Consumer Protections.

MEDIUM, RARE

WARNING: 30+ FCC Actions in One Year to Slice & Dice States’ Rights & Consumer Protections.

https://bit.ly/2OaOzGW

On Sept 26th, 2018, the three FCC Republicans; Chairman Ajit Pai and the two commissioners, Brendan Carr and Michael O’Reilly, will out-vote the one Democrat FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, in a number of ongoing proceedings.

Starting in April 2017, the FCC created two specific FCC proceedings designed to take away the public interest obligations on communications services, slice by slice. There have been over 30+ different related actions and decisions in just these two dockets to move the AT&T and Verizon agenda along and erase basic consumer protections on all wired services — in just one year.

• Accelerating Wireline Broadband Deployment by Removing Barriers to Infrastructure Investment WC Docket №17–84
• Accelerating Wireless Broadband Deployment by Removing Barriers to Infrastructure Investment; WT Docket №17–79;

At the same time, the FCC is doing this so that it can then preempt the states and cities’ rights to deal with wireless 5G and small cell deployments.

Unfortunately, we already know what the vote will look like as the FCC put out an early draft. Moreover, Ajit Pai was a senior attorney for Verizon; Brendan Carr worked for Verizon as well as AT&T and the wireless association, CTIA, while Commissioner O’Reilly is a vocal friend of ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Counsel. In fact, the FCC’s 5G plan being presented appears to have been created based on the ALEC model legislation for 5G wireless that has been used in multiple states.

So, more like a vote taken in Russia, where the decision has already been completed and the vote is rigged, the FCC is just doing this for show. The FCC is presenting the new digital Potemkin village 5G wireless plan, tied to the removal of basic rights and protections of customers on the wired side.

As noted by Commissioner Rosenworcel, during the past year these proceedings have already thrown the public interest under the bus. Rosenworcel writes:

“Unfortunately, I believe the bulk of this decision falls short of this statutory mark. Let me explain why. When a carrier wants to make big changes to its network, this agency had policies in place to ensure no consumers were cut off from communications. In other words, leave no consumer behind. We had rules that required carriers to educate their customers about network alterations and simply answer calls about how their service might be changed when old facilities were swapped out for new. Today the FCC guts these basic consumer protection policies. It tosses them out. It says we don’t need them.”

There Is a Subplot — Dismantle the state wired utilities, shut off the copper, and replace it with wireless.

Most of the discussion is now focused on the FCC’s removal of the rights of states and cities to manage the wireless deployments and rights of way in their own communities. As the City of Murieta California put it:

“The Commissions’ proposed action could force cities to lease out publicly owned property, eliminate reasonable local environmental and design review, and eliminate the ability for cities to negotiate fair leases or public benefits for the installation of “small cell” wireless equipment on taxpayer-funded property based on updated guidance.”

But there’s an important subplot — the FCC has taken a year and piled-on a collection of changes so that Verizon and AT&T can ‘shut off the copper’ wires, and not replace them with fiber optics, but to hand over the existing wires to their wireless company — because it make the companies more money. Getting rid of any state-based obligations or federal rules that remain to do this is what these proceedings are really all about.

And all of this is being done alongside a slew of other harmful concurrent actions:

• Get rid of all competitors: There is a petition by the wireline phone association, USTelecom, to remove the rights of competitors to ‘interconnect’ and use the networks.
• Weed Whacking: The FCC has been getting rid of all of the cost accounting rules and regulations — and any leftover rules.
• Net Neutrality constraints have been removed so that one company can control all services over the wire, including the Internet and broadband, but also wireless, and favor their own affiliates, etc.
• Privacy challenges continue so that that the phone, wireless, cable or internet company can track you, advertise to you, and sell your data.

In the end, more importantly, these proceedings allow the wireless companies to replace the wired networks, even for home and office use, without the safeguards and basic consumer protections.

At the Core are the Wires and FCC Treachery

In April 2017, the FCC starts and presents proceeding 17–84, and the first round is to change the regulations by claiming that this is a plan for fiber-based upgrades of the networks. Notice that it doesn’t say anything about wireless.

To read the rest of this article:

https://bit.ly/2OaOzGW

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