[House Hearing, 115 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
FROM EDGE TO CORE: PERSPECTIVE ON INTERNET PRIORITIZATION
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMUNICATIONS AND TECHNOLOGY
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
APRIL 17, 2018
__________
Serial No. 115-120
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Printed for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce
energycommerce.house.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
31-393 PDF WASHINGTON : 2018
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office,
http://bookstore.gpo.gov. For more information, contact the GPO Customer Contact Center,
U.S. Government Publishing Office. Phone 202-512-1800, or 866-512-1800 (toll-free).
E-mail, [email protected].
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
GREG WALDEN, Oregon
Chairman
JOE BARTON, Texas FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey
Vice Chairman Ranking Member
FRED UPTON, Michigan BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois
JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois ANNA G. ESHOO, California
MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee GENE GREEN, Texas
STEVE SCALISE, Louisiana DIANA DeGETTE, Colorado
ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio MICHAEL F. DOYLE, Pennsylvania
CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
GREGG HARPER, Mississippi G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina
LEONARD LANCE, New Jersey DORIS O. MATSUI, California
BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky KATHY CASTOR, Florida
PETE OLSON, Texas JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland
DAVID B. McKINLEY, West Virginia JERRY McNERNEY, California
ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois PETER WELCH, Vermont
H. MORGAN GRIFFITH, Virginia BEN RAY LUJAN, New Mexico
GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida PAUL TONKO, New York
BILL JOHNSON, Ohio YVETTE D. CLARKE, New York
BILLY LONG, Missouri DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa
LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana KURT SCHRADER, Oregon
BILL FLORES, Texas JOSEPH P. KENNEDY, III,
SUSAN W. BROOKS, Indiana Massachusetts
MARKWAYNE MULLIN, Oklahoma TONY CARDENAS, California
RICHARD HUDSON, North Carolina RAUL RUIZ, California
CHRIS COLLINS, New York SCOTT H. PETERS, California
KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota DEBBIE DINGELL, Michigan
TIM WALBERG, Michigan
MIMI WALTERS, California
RYAN A. COSTELLO, Pennsylvania
EARL L. ``BUDDY'' CARTER, Georgia
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina
7_____
Subcommittee on Communications and Technology
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee
Chairman
LEONARD LANCE, New Jersey MICHAEL F. DOYLE, Pennsylvania
Vice Chairman Ranking Member
JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois PETER WELCH, Vermont
STEVE SCALISE, Louisiana YVETTE D. CLARKE, New York
ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa
BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky RAUL RUIZ, California
PETE OLSON, Texas DEBBIE DINGELL, Michigan
ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois
GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida ANNA G. ESHOO, California
BILL JOHNSON, Ohio ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
BILLY LONG, Missouri G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina
BILL FLORES, Texas DORIS O. MATSUI, California
SUSAN W. BROOKS, Tennessee JERRY McNERNEY, California
CHRIS COLLINS, New York FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey (ex
KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota officio)
MIMI WALTERS, California
RYAN A. COSTELLO, Pennsylvania
GREG WALDEN, Oregon (ex officio)
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hon. Marsha Blackburn, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Tennessee, opening statement.......................... 2
Prepared statement........................................... 3
Hon. Michael F. Doyle, a Representative in Congress from the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, opening statement................ 4
Prepared statement........................................... 5
Hon. Greg Walden, a Representative in Congress from the State of
Oregon, opening statement...................................... 6
Prepared statement........................................... 8
Hon. Frank Pallone, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the
State of New Jersey, opening statement......................... 9
Prepared statement........................................... 10
Witnesses
Richard Bennett, Founder, High Tech Forum........................ 12
Prepared statement........................................... 14
Answers to submitted questions............................... 181
Peter Rysavy, President, Rysavy Research......................... 55
Prepared statement........................................... 56
Paul W. Schroeder, Director, Public Policy and Strategic
Alliances, Aira Tech Corporation............................... 65
Prepared statement........................................... 67
Matthew F. Wood, Policy Director, Free Press and the Free Press
Action Fund.................................................... 79
Prepared statement........................................... 81
Submitted Material
Letter of April 16, 2018, from Angie Kronenberg, Chief Advocate
and General Counsel, INCOMPAS, to Mrs. Blackburn and Mr. Doyle,
submitted by Mr. Doyle......................................... 143
Statement of American Academy of Pediatrics by Colleen A. Kraft,
President, April 16, 2018, submitted by Mr. Doyle.............. 150
Letter of April 16, 2018, from Elizabeth Mendenhall, President,
National Association of Realtors, to Mrs. Blackburn and Mr.
Doyle, submitted by Mr. Doyle.................................. 153
Letter of April 16, 2018, from Mei Wa Kwong, Executive Director,
Center for Connected Health Policy, to Mrs. Blackburn and Mr.
Doyle, submitted by Mr. Doyle.................................. 155
Letter of April 26, 2017, from Engine, et al., to Ajit Pai,
Chairman, Federal Communications Commission,\1\ submitted by
Ms. Clarke
Article of April 17, 2018, ``Prioritization: Moving past
prejudice to make internet policy based on fact,'' by Roslyn
Layton, AEI, submitted by Mr. Flores........................... 159
Letter of April 16, 2018 from Jeffrey R.L. Smith, Vice President
of Public Policy, American Medical Informatics Association, to
Mrs. Blackburn and Mr. Doyle, submitted by Mr. Ruiz............ 163
----------
\1\ The information has been retained in committee files and also is
available at https://docs.house.gov/Committee/Calendar/
ByEvent.aspx?EventID=108168.
Letter of April 17, 2018, from Jonathan Schwantes, Senior Policy
Counsel, Consumers Union, to Mrs. Blackburn and Mr. Doyle,
submitted by Mr. Doyle......................................... 167
CloudFlare tweets, November 22, 2017, submitted by Mrs. Blackburn 170
Report of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation,
``Designed for Change: End-to-End Arguments, Internet
Innovation, and the Net Neutrality Debate,'' September 2009, by
Richard Bennett,\1\ submitted by Mrs. Blackburn
Report of the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group,
``Differentiated Treatment of Internet Traffic,'' October
2015,\1\ submitted by Mrs. Blackburn
Article of April 2, 2018, ``Paid prioritization: Debunking the
myth of fast and slow lanes,'' by Daniel Lyons, AEI, submitted
by Mrs. Blackburn.............................................. 171
Declaration of Peter Rysavy, Rysavy Research, July 17, 2017,\1\
submitted by Mrs. Blackburn
Report of Rysavy Research and Mobile Future, ``How Wireless is
Different: Considerations for the Open Internet Rulemaking,''
September 12, 2014,\1\ submitted by Mrs. Blackburn
Article of May 22, 2017, ``Reclassification and Investment: An
Analysis of Free Press' `It's Working' Report,'' by Dr. George
S. Ford, Phoenix Center Perspectives, submitted by Mrs.
Blackburn...................................................... 175
----------
\1\ The information has been retained in committee files and also is
available at https://docs.house.gov/Committee/Calendar/
ByEvent.aspx?EventID=108168.
FROM EDGE TO CORE: PERSPECTIVE ON INTERNET PRIORITIZATION
----------
TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2018
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Communications and Technology,
Committee on Energy and Commerce,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:16 a.m., in
room 2322, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Marsha Blackburn
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Members present: Representatives Blackburn, Lance, Shimkus,
Latta, Guthrie, Olson, Bilirakis, Johnson, Long, Flores,
Brooks, Collins, Walters, Costello, Walden (ex officio), Doyle,
Welch, Clarke, Loebsack, Ruiz, Dingell, Eshoo, Engel, Matsui,
McNerney, and Pallone (ex officio).
Staff present: Jon Adame, Policy Coordinator,
Communications and Technology; Daniel Butler, Staff Assistant;
Robin Colwell, Chief Counsel, Communications and Technology;
Kristine Fargotstein, Detailee, Communications and Technology;
Sean Farrell, Professional Staff Member, Communications and
Technology; Adam Fromm, Director of Outreach and Coalitions;
Elena Hernandez, Press Secretary; Tim Kurth, Deputy Chief
Counsel, Communications and Technology; Lauren McCarty,
Counsel, Communications and Technology; Austin Stonebraker,
Press Assistant; Evan Viau, Legislative Clerk, Communications
and Technology; Hamlin Wade, Special Advisor, External Affairs;
Jeff Carroll, Minority Staff Director; Jennifer Epperson,
Minority FCC Detailee; David Goldman, Minority Chief Counsel,
Communications and Technology; Jerry Leverich III, Minority
Counsel; Jourdan Lewis, Minority Staff Assistant; Dan Miller,
Minority Policy Analyst; Andrew Souvall, Minority Director of
Communications, Outreach and Member Services; and C.J. Young,
Minority Press Secretary.
Mrs. Blackburn. The Subcommittee on Communications and
Technology will now come to order.
You notice that we are starting just a couple of minutes
late. We understand that the Environment hearing downstairs
started a couple of minutes late, and we are trying to
accommodate the chairman of the full committee and the ranking
member of the full committee to get up here for their opening
statements.
I now recognize myself for 5 minutes for an opening
statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARSHA BLACKBURN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TENNESSEE
Good morning, everyone, and to our witnesses, thank you for
being here, and welcome. We are here to talk about
prioritization. Not just paid prioritization--all
prioritization online.
Despite what some of my colleagues sometimes seem to think,
prioritization is not a dirty word. The internet, in fact, is
based on it.
In the net neutrality conversation, there is a common
misconception that the internet is one big highway where all
the cars travel at the same speed and we cannot allow for any
fast lanes to exist without causing a big traffic jam for
everybody else.
It is something like the picture that we are going to put
up on the screen. It ran into a jam.
[Laughter.]
Mrs. Blackburn. Yes, we are in need of some prioritization
here. OK. No, that's the wrong picture. See if we can--OK.
Our witnesses today know that this could not be further
from the truth, and the next picture we are going to put up in
fact is probably a lot closer to reality, but it is still an
oversimplified idea of the internet: different connections,
agreements, prioritization, depending on the needs.
And the amazing new capabilities that we will experience on
next-generation networks will be realized not only through
innovation in the chips and the servers and the infrastructure,
but also through even more efficient and effective
prioritization.
I would also point out that, in real life, all sorts of
interactions are prioritized every day. Many of you sitting in
this room right now paid a line-sitter to get priority access
to this hearing.
In fact, it is commonplace for the Government itself to
offer priority access to services. If you have ever used
Priority Mail, you know this to be the case.
And what about TSA pre-check? It just might have saved you
time as you traveled today. If you define paid prioritization
as simply the act of paying to get your own content in front of
the consumer faster, prioritized ads or sponsored content are
the basis of many business models online, as many of our
Members pointed out during the Facebook hearing last week.
Prioritization is sometimes crucial from a public policy
standpoint. Just as we all want the ambulance and the fire
truck to be prioritized over the rest of the traffic on the
highway, there is a need for voice packets to be prioritized
over data packets to make sure that your 9-1-1 calls get
through first, and there are lots of other examples where we
can all agree that certain data and certain applications should
be prioritized on the network.
One of our witnesses is pioneering a technology to provide
real-time audio support to the visually impaired, describing
the surroundings and the nonverbal interactions taking place
around the user.
Other examples that our witnesses will discuss today
include telemedicine and autonomous vehicles. Prioritization of
data on the network is not unique or uniquely harmful.
It may be an uphill climb, but what we are trying to do
with this hearing is to leave aside the simplistic ``fast
lane'' talking points and kick off a more realistic discussion
on the subject.
My net neutrality bill left out the old language banning
all paid prioritization because I believe that we need a more
nuanced approach and a more thorough and thoughtful discussion.
For the Government to consider a ban on any prioritization
on the internet, paid or unpaid, we need a better understanding
of what specific harmful conduct we are trying to address and a
better understanding of how to leave the door open for the
beneficial prioritization that's necessary to keep the internet
as we know it working and to bring even more benefits to
consumers.
[The prepared statement of Mrs. Blackburn follows:]
Prepared statement of Hon. Marsha Blackburn
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our witnesses. We
are here to talk about prioritization. Not just paid
prioritization--all prioritization online. Despite what some of
my colleagues sometimes seem to think, prioritization is not a
dirty word. The Internet is based on it.
In the net neutrality conversation there is a common
misconception that the Internet is one big highway, where all
the cars travel at the same speed and we cannot allow for any
fast lanes or toll lanes to exist without causing a big traffic
jam for everybody else. Something like this picture:
*Picture of traffic jam*
Our witnesses today know that this could not be further
from the truth. This picture is a lot closer to reality, in
fact it probably still gives you an oversimplified idea of the
internet. Different connections, different agreements, and
different prioritization, depending on needs.
*Picture of mixing bowl interchange*
And the amazing new capabilities that we will experience on
next generation networks will be realized not only through
innovation in the chips and the servers and the infrastructure,
but also through even more efficient and effective
prioritization.
I would also point out that in real life, all sorts of
interactions are prioritized every day. Many of you sitting in
this room right now paid a line-sitter to get priority access
to this hearing. In fact, it is commonplace for the Government
itself to offer priority access to services. If you have ever
used Priority Mail, you know this to be the case. And what
about TSA pre-check? It just might have saved you time as you
traveled here today. If you define paid prioritization as
simply the act of paying to get your own content in front of
the consumer faster, prioritized ads or sponsored content are
the basis of many business models online, as many of our
Members pointed out at the Facebook hearing last week.
Prioritization is sometimes crucial from a public policy
standpoint. Just as we all want the ambulance and the fire
truck to be prioritized over the rest of the traffic on the
highway, there is a need for voice packets to be prioritized
over data packets to make sure that your 9-1-1 call gets
through first. And there are lots of other examples where we
can all agree that certain data and certain applications should
be prioritized on the network. One of our witnesses is
pioneering a technology to provide real-time audio support to
the visually impaired, describing the surroundings and the
nonverbal interactions taking place around the user. Other
examples that our witnesses will discuss today include
telemedicine and autonomous vehicles.
Prioritization of data on the network is not unique, or
uniquely harmful. It may be an uphill climb, but what we are
trying to do with this hearing is to leave aside the simplistic
``fast lane'' talking points and kick off a more realistic
discussion on the subject. My net neutrality bill left out the
old language banning all paid prioritization because I believe
that we need a more nuanced approach, and a more thorough and
thoughtful discussion. For the Government to consider a ban on
any prioritization on the Internet, paid or unpaid, we need a
better understanding of what specific harmful conduct we are
trying to address, and a better understanding of how to leave
the door open for the beneficial prioritization that's
necessary to keep the Internet as we know it working, and to
bring even more benefits to consumers.
Mrs. Blackburn. Now I recognize the ranking member, Mr.
Doyle, for 5 minutes for an opening statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL F. DOYLE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA
Mr. Doyle. Thank you, Madam Chair, for holding this hearing
and thank you to the witnesses for appearing before us. I'd
like to in particular thank Matt Wood, a proud Pittsburgher,
for being here today.
This subcommittee is once again discussing net neutrality
and the fallout from Chairman Pai's repeal of the 2015 Open
Internet Order.
This short-sighted act has created an uncertain landscape
where innovators and entrepreneurs trying to develop new
services, applications, and devices can be taxed, tolled, or
blocked at any time by an ISP.
Prioritization practices that were once required to meet
the standard of reasonable network management as judged by
Federal experts and network engineering, telecommunications,
and competition policy at the FCC will now be determined by an
ISP's bottom line.
As I've talked to companies large and small that developed
and deployed new applications in the wake of the 2015 net
neutrality rules, their message was clear: that the certainty
created by the rules was stoking investment and giving
certainty to investors and that consumers were benefitting from
these new offerings.
A number of companies I talked with were working to deploy
services that directly competed with ISPs' own offering at
lower prices, bringing what we can all agree is a much needed
competition to a stagnant marketplace.
I am deeply concerned that, as we move forward in a world
without the open internet rules, ISPs will once again act in
anticompetitive ways intended to tamp down competition and
consolidate their hold over their consumers.
We have already seen ISPs zero-rate data from their own
services and their affiliates while forcing users to either
limit usage on competing apps or pay costly overage fees.
If we look at the history of the internet before net
neutrality, we find a number of instances where ISPs used their
market position to stifle innovation and prevent competitors
from bringing new products to market, all while coming to
Congress and the Government arguing that they were only
thinking about the consumer.
Today, it seems we are adding another chapter to that book.
Today, we are talking about the prioritization of the internet
content.
If the testimony of a number of our witnesses is to be
believed, paid prioritization can bring great benefits to the
internet. They claim that the coming flood of data can only be
dealt with by prioritizing it and creating incentives and
opportunities for Web sites and edge providers to pay to get
their packets to consumers before their competitors.
Well, frankly, I don't believe it. We have heard these
arguments before. The truth is, giving ISPs the ability to play
gatekeeper only benefits the ISPs and their shareholders, and
it significantly hurts innovators and consumers.
More than that, it fundamentally undercuts the level
playing field and open marketplace that defines the internet
economy.
Now, I have a bill that has 160 co-sponsors in the House
with companion legislation with bipartisan support in the
Senate to fix this mess.
Our CRA would reinstate the 2015 open internet rules and
restore the FCC to its expert oversight role over ISP network
practices.
When you look at the polling on this issue, these rules
have overwhelmingly bipartisan support with a vast majority of
Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, and I hope to work
with my friends on the other side of the aisle to make this
bill bipartisan as well.
Madam Chair, I'd also like to raise a process issue leading
up to today's hearing. Mr. Bennett, who was first to submit his
testimony, amended his submission yesterday afternoon in
meaningful ways.
I am concerned that many of the changes to Mr. Bennett's
written submission were of a substantive and factual nature,
and that is of great concern to us.
I don't believe the committee should get into the practice
of allowing such last-minute changes. When we have witnesses do
this, the committee process breaks down, and it also--it leads
to many of us just questioning whether the testimony will be
credible.
I'd also like to note that baseball season is starting here
in Congress. I had my team out on the field for the first time
today, and like baseball, these markets cannot function without
clear rules and a ref to call balls and strikes.
The word is that ISPs want us to live in one where there is
no referee and where there are no rules. The game only ends
when the other team and all the fans go home because they are
just sick of watching one team playing by their own rules.
I don't want to live in that world, and neither do the
American people.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Doyle follows:]
Prepared statement of Hon. Michael F. Doyle
Thank you Madam Chairman for holding this hearing, and
thank you to the witnesses for appearing before us. I'd like to
thank Matt Wood, a proud Pittsburgher, for being here in
particular.
This subcommittee is once again discussing net neutrality
and the fallout from Chairman Pai's repeal of the 2015 Open
Internet Order. This short-sighted act has created an uncertain
landscape where innovators and entrepreneurs trying to develop
new services, applications, and devices can be taxed, tolled,
or blocked at any time by an Internet Service Provider or ISP.
Prioritization practices that once were required to meet
the standard of ``reasonable network management,'' as judged by
Federal experts in network engineering, telecommunications, and
competition policy at the FCC, will now be determined by an
ISP's bottom line.
As I have talked to companies large and small that
developed and deployed new applications in the wake of the 2015
net neutrality rules, their message was clear: that the
certainty created by the rules was stoking investment and
giving certainty to investors, and that consumers were
benefiting from these new offerings. A number of companies I
talked with were working to deploy services that directly
competed with ISPs' own offerings at lower prices, bringing
what we can all agree is much-needed competition to a stagnant
marketplace.
I am deeply concerned that as we move forward in a world
without the Open Internet Rules, ISPs will once again act in
anticompetitive ways intended to tamp down competition and
consolidate their hold over their customers. We've already seen
ISPs zero-rate data from their own services and their
affiliates--while forcing users to either limit usage on
competing apps or pay costly overage fees.
If we look at the history of the internet before net
neutrality, we find a number of instances where ISPs used their
market position to stifle innovation and prevent competitors
from bringing new products to market--all while coming to
Congress and the Government arguing that they were only
thinking about the consumer. Today we are adding another
chapter to that book.
Today, we're talking about the prioritization of Internet
content. If the testimony of a number of our witnesses is to be
believed, paid prioritization can bring great benefits to the
Internet. They claim that the coming flood of data can only be
dealt with by prioritizing it and creating incentives and
opportunities for Web sites and edge providers to pay to get
their packets to consumers before their competitors.
Frankly, I don't believe it. We've heard these arguments
before. The truth is that giving ISPs the ability to play
gatekeeper only benefits the ISPs and their shareholders--and
significantly HURTS innovators and consumers. More than that it
fundamentally undercuts the level playing field and open
marketplace that defines the Internet economy.
Now I have a bill that has 160 cosponsors in the House and
companion legislation with bipartisan support in the Senate. To
fix this mess. Our CRA would reinstate the 2015 Open Internet
Rules and restore the FCC to its expert oversight role over
ISPs network practices. When you look at the polling on this
issue, these rules have overwhelming bipartisan support with
the vast majority of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.
I hope to work with my friends on the other side of the aisle
to make our bill bipartisan as well.
Madame Chairman, I'd also like to raise a process issue
leading up to today's hearing. Mr. Bennett--who was the first
to submit his testimony--amended his submission yesterday
afternoon in meaningful ways. I'm concerned that many of the
changes to Mr. Bennett's written submission were of a
substantive and factual nature. What's more, the committee
cannot get in the practice of allowing such last-minute
changes. When witnesses play games like this it undermines the
credibility of these proceedings.
I'd also like to note that baseball season is starting here
again in Congress, and I had my team out of the field for the
first time today. Like baseball, these markets cannot function
without clear rules and a ref to call balls and strikes. The
world that ISPs want us to live in is one where there is no ref
and there are no rules. The game only ends when the other team
and all the fans go home because they are sick of watching one
team play by their own rules. I don't want to live in that
world, and neither do the American people.
Mr. Doyle. Madam Chair, I'd like to ask unanimous consent
to have the following documents into the record: letters from
INCOMPAS, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National
Association of Realtors, and the Center for Connected Health
Policy.
Mrs. Blackburn. Without objection.
[The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.]
Mr. Doyle. Thank you very much, and I yield back.
Mrs. Blackburn. The gentleman yields back.
The chairman of the full committee, Mr. Walden, you're
recognized for 5 minutes.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. GREG WALDEN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OREGON
Mr. Walden. I thank the chairman.
Thank you all for being here. We appreciate your expert
testimony as we try to wade into this issue and get to the
facts.
This subcommittee in particular has long led the way in
exercising oversight over the internet. As we will hear today,
the internet looks nothing like it did when it was first fully
commercialized back in 1995.
Back then, networks were in their nascent stage and network
management presented a different set of problems. But today,
with users sending over a hundred exabytes of data per month,
networks have had to continually adapt to manage congestion and
will need to do so even more adeptly and efficiently in the
future.
The development of these networks and their ability to
handle the ever-growing traffic demands users place on them is
truly an innovative feat and not one that consumers often think
about because, when you turn on your computer or unlock your
phone, the network--the internet just works.
Because it appears so simple, it's easy for consumers to
think about the internet connections being managed by their
ISP--their internet service provider--from one end to the
other, and for years consumers were told the internet was an
information superhighway, giving the false impression that all
internet traffic is moving the same direction on an equal plane
at the same time.
We even use the word ``traffic'' to describe the movement
of information and data across the internet, but it's actually
a lot more complicated than that.
The internet is not a highway, where there can be so-called
fast and slow lanes. The internet is actually a network of
networks with many layers managing the data that flows across
it.
There are applications layers that establish the connection
and encrypt data. There is the transport layer that prepares
data for transport. And there is the network layer which
identifies the packet routing sequence.
Within these layers there are many different players aside
from your ISP involved in managing traffic. Devices, software,
Wi-Fi routers, and content delivery networks, or CDNs, can all
load, manage, and relay traffic in different ways.
We will hear from our witnesses today a more in-depth
explanation of how the internet actually works, not just
talking points, and the role prioritization plays in operating
networks.
But in a basic sense, prioritization has nothing to do with
traffic speed. Rather, it's putting certain bits over others to
ensure that all packets arrive to their destination on time.
A complete ban on prioritization would not permit this and
would not allow some services and applications to operate
smoothly. In other words, prioritization currently exists
across the internet architecture and is necessary to ensure the
internet functions properly.
It's also worth noting that, while we have heard a lot from
our friends at the edge providers about how prioritization is
bad for business, those operating at the edge pay to prioritize
traffic every day through the use of various interconnection
agreements, including CDN.
In order to facilitate high-demand applications like video
streaming, many of the most popular content providers don't
send data over the public internet. Rather, they directly
interconnect with the CDN, allowing the edge providers' traffic
to be prioritized to provide a better user experience. It's
estimated that, by 2021, CDNs will carry 71 percent of global
internet traffic.
Today is not the first time this committee has considered
how to best legislate the issue of prioritization. I released
draft legislation last Congress that would establish rules of
the road to ensure the internet remains open to all.
Similarly, Chairman Blackburn introduced her Open Internet
Preservation Act at the end of last year. Rather than waste our
efforts on partisan legislation like the CRA, we hope our
colleagues on both sides of the aisle will join our effort to
development legislation that will provide lasting solutions to
some of the outstanding questions regarding internet traffic
management.
What exactly do we mean and what harms are we trying to
address in restricting internet prioritization, whether paid or
unpaid, whether the content's affiliated or not?
So I agree with Chairman Blackburn that, in order to move
forward toward a long overdue legislative solution, we need to
be able to have this conversation in a nuanced, in-depth manner
and figure out a common ground.
So I look forward to hearing from all the witnesses. I
would just tell you we have another hearing going on
downstairs, so a lot of Members have to bounce back and forth.
But we do have your prepared testimony, and we appreciate your
participation in this very important discussion about the
future of the internet.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Walden follows:]
Prepared statement of Hon. Greg Walden
Good morning, and welcome to our witnesses.
The Energy and Commerce Committee has the broadest
jurisdiction in all of Congress. And that jurisdiction includes
one of the most important social and economic tools in the
history of the world--the internet.
This subcommittee in particular has long led the way in
exercising oversight over the internet.
As we will hear today, the internet looks nothing like it
did when it was first fully commercialized in 1995. Back then,
networks were in their nascent stage and network management
presented a different set of problems. But today, with users
sending over 100 exabytes of data per month, networks have had
to continually adapt to manage congestion, and will need to do
so even more adeptly and efficiently in the future.
The development of these networks, and their ability to
handle the ever-growing traffic demands users place on them is
truly an innovative feat. And not one that consumers often
think about--because when you turn on your computer, or unlock
your phone, the internet just works.
Because it appears so simple, it is easy for consumers to
think about their internet connection as being managed by their
Internet Service Provider, or ISP, from end to end. And for
years, consumers were told the internet was an `information
superhighway' giving the false impression that all internet
traffic is moving the same direction on an equal plane at the
same time. We even use the word `traffic' to describe the
movement of information and data across the internet--but it is
actually a lot more complicated than that.
The internet isn't a highway, where there can be so-called
fast and slow lanes. The internet is actually a network of
networks, with many layers managing the data that flows across
it. There are application layers that establish the connection
and encrypt data, there is the transport layer that prepares
data for transport, and there is the network layer, which
identifies the packet routing sequence.
Within these layers, there are many different players aside
from your ISP involved in managing traffic. Devices, software,
Wi-Fi routers, and content delivery networks, or CDNs, can all
load, manage, and relay traffic in different ways.
We will hear from our witnesses today a more in-depth
explanation of how the internet actually works--and the role
prioritization plays in operating networks.
But in a basic sense, prioritization has nothing to do with
traffic speed, rather it is putting certain bits over others to
ensure that all packets arrive to their destination on time.
A complete ban on prioritization would not permit this and
would not allow some services and applications to operate
smoothly. In other words, prioritization currently exists
across the internet architecture and is necessary to ensure the
internet functions properly.
It is also worth nothing, that while we've heard a lot from
our friends at the edge providers about how prioritization is
bad for business, those operating at the edge pay to prioritize
traffic every day through the use of various interconnection
agreements, including CDNs.
In order to facilitate high demand applications like video
streaming, many of the most popular content providers don't
send data over the public internet, rather they directly
interconnect with a CDN, allowing the edge provider's traffic
to be prioritized to provide a better user experience. It is
estimated that by 2021, CDNs will carry 71% of global internet
traffic.
Today is not the first time this committee has considered
how to best legislate the issue of prioritization. I released
draft legislation last Congress that would establish rules of
the road to ensure the internet remains open to all. Similarly,
Chairman Blackburn introduced her Open Internet Preservation
Act at the end of last year.
Rather than waste our efforts on partisan legislation like
the CRA, we hope our colleagues on both sides will join our
effort to develop legislation that will provide lasting
solutions to some of the outstanding questions regarding
internet traffic management.
What exactly do we mean and what harms are we trying to
address in restricting internet prioritization, whether paid or
unpaid, whether the content is affiliated or not?
I completely agree with Chairman Blackburn that in order to
move forward toward a long overdue legislative solution, we
need to be able to have this conversation, in a nuanced, in-
depth manner, and figure out the common ground.
I look forward to hearing from all of our witnesses.
Mr. Walden. With that, Madam Chair, I yield back the
balance of my time.
Mrs. Blackburn. The gentleman yields back.
Mr. Pallone, you're recognized for 5 minutes.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK PALLONE, JR., A REPRESENTATIVE
IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY
Mr. Pallone. Thank you, Madam Chair.
The internet is a powerful engine of economic growth and a
potent platform for free speech. With a working broadband
connection, anyone can work from home, sell their own products
online, and connect with companies a world away.
And in the past few years, we have seen how the internet
can help everyday people launch a worldwide political movement.
But the power of the internet is rooted in the principles
of net neutrality. These principles are simple and well
understood. Broadband companies cannot pick internet winners
and losers by blocking or slowing down content or charging
extra for fast lanes.
It's a question of fairness, and there are no loopholes.
Until the Trump administration took over the FCC, even the
broadband providers themselves supported these principles,
including a flat ban on fast lanes.
The largest providers told us time and again that they
agreed that paid prioritization should be prohibited. They said
that they had no intention of charging anyone extra for faster
speeds.
But recently those voices have gone silent, and that
silence presents a real threat to small businesses and speech
online. Where there was once agreement on a prohibition on fast
lanes, some now want to add loopholes to net neutrality. The
reasoning is convoluted and confusing. They argue that somehow
allowing broadband providers to charge small companies extra
for internet fast lanes is good for small business. But that
makes no sense, and no one's buying it.
Small businesses oppose having to pay extra for fast lanes.
So do telemedicine companies, disabled veterans groups, self-
driving-car companies, churches, nonprofit, and the list goes
on.
Net neutrality advocates have spoken loud and clear. We
want everyone to have a faster internet, not just the chosen
few who can afford to pay extra, and that's why Democrats on
this committee introduced the LIFT America Act to bring faster
broadband to everyone.
The only ones who want broadband providers to charge money
for fast lanes are the broadband providers, and despite these
latest attempts to muddy the water and create confusion,
banning paid prioritization is not a new issue.
The FCC solved this problem when it passed net neutrality
in 2015. At that time, the FCC correctly banned these fast
lanes with the exception of certain specialized services like
health care.
The FCC got it right in 2015 and the Trump FCC got it wrong
when it killed net neutrality last year, and that's why I
support the legislation introduced by Ranking Member Doyle that
would restore the well-crafted and balanced 2015 protections,
and I encourage any of my colleagues who support real net
neutrality to sign on to Ranking Member Doyle's CRA as well.
The CRA is the best way to put net neutrality back in place
and support small businesses, and I'd like to yield the
remaining time to Ms. Eshoo.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Pallone follows:]
Prepared statement of Hon. Frank Pallone, Jr.
The internet is a powerful engine of economic growth and a
potent platform for free speech. With a working broadband
connection, anyone can work from home, sell their own products
online, and connect with companies a world away. And in the
past few years, we have seen how the internet can help everyday
people launch a worldwide political movement.
But the power of the internet is rooted in the principles
of net neutrality. These principles are simple and well
understood: broadband companies cannot pick internet winners
and losers by blocking, or slowing down content or charging
extra for fast lanes. It's a question of fairness, and there
are no loopholes.
Until the Trump administration took over the FCC, even the
broadband providers themselves supported these principles,
including a flat ban on fast lanes. The largest providers told
us time and again that they agreed that paid prioritization
should be prohibited. They said that they had no intention of
charging anyone extra for faster speeds. But recently, those
voices have gone silent, and that silence presents a real
threat to small businesses and speech online.
Where there was once agreement on a prohibition on fast
lanes, some now want to add loopholes to net neutrality. The
reasoning is convoluted and confusing-they argue that somehow
allowing broadband providers to charge small companies extra
for internet fast lanes is good for small business.
This makes no sense and no one is buying it.
Small businesses oppose having to pay extra for fast lanes.
So do telemedicine companies, disabled veterans groups, self-
driving car companies, churches, non-profits, and the list goes
on.
Net neutrality advocates have spoken loud and clear: we
want everyone to have a faster internet, not just the chosen
few who can afford to pay extra. That's why Democrats on this
committee introduced the LIFT America Act to bring faster
broadband to everyone.
The only ones who want broadband providers to charge more
for fast lanes are the broadband providers.
Despite these latest attempts to muddy the water and create
confusion, banning paid prioritization is not a new issue.
The FCC solved this problem when it passed net neutrality
in 2015. At that time, the FCC correctly banned these fast
lanes, with the exception of certain specialized services like
healthcare. The FCC got it right in 2015 and the Trump FCC got
it wrong when it killed net neutrality last year.
That's why I support the legislation introduced by Ranking
Member Doyle that would restore the well-crafted and balanced
2015 protections. And I encourage any of my colleagues who
support real net neutrality to sign on to Ranking Member
Doyle's CRA as well. This CRA is the best way to put net
neutrality back in place and support small businesses.
Thank you.
Ms. Eshoo. I thank our ranking member, and good morning,
everyone. And to the witnesses: Welcome, and thank you for
being here.
We are now a decade into the fight to protect net
neutrality, and throughout that time there have been many
arguments from those who oppose it: that it will kill jobs, it
would harm investment, or hurt the free press.
All of these have been refuted each in turn. This is
actually, I think, a very simple issue. It's about fairness and
equal access to an essential resource, the internet.
The 2015 Open Internet Order created the strongest, most
reliable rules to protect that level playing field for
innovation. The courts and the FCC both acknowledged that net
neutrality was critical to the virtuous cycle that has enabled
the internet to act as a tool of growth, of innovation, of
investment, and of free expression.
That same FCC found that paid prioritization is inherently
harmful to that fruitful cycle that fuels education, jobs, and
our economy.
Yet now we have the same companies who proclaim in full-
page newspaper ads that they support net neutrality, but they
are pushing for an exception for prioritization.
This is about money. This is about money. We should just
all acknowledge that and have a debate about it. But it's all
about money.
We may be a decade down the road, but it's about the same
thing that it always has been about, and that is who controls
the onramps to the internet, being able to pick winners or
losers, and that's based on pay to play. It is about money.
I don't blame companies for wanting to make money. That's
what they are in the business to do. But we have an obligation
to the public, and I think that's what this debate is about.
So I look forward to hearing from the witnesses, and I
think everyone knows exactly where I stand on this.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Eshoo. I yield back. Thank you.
Mrs. Blackburn. The gentlelady yields back. Mr. Pallone
yields back, and this concludes our Member opening statements.
I will remind the committee that each Member's opening
statement will be made a part of the permanent record for the
committee.
We thank our witnesses for being here today, and you all
are going to have the opportunity to give your opening
statements, followed by a round of questions from our Members.
Our panel today: Mr. Richard Bennett, founder of High Tech
Forum; Mr. Peter ``Ree-sa-vay''--am I saying that properly?
Mr. Rysavy. ``Ri-sah-vy.''
Mrs. Blackburn. Rysavy, president of Rysavy Research; Mr.
Paul Schroeder, director of public policy and strategic
alliances at Aira Tech Corporation; and Matt Wood, policy
director at Free Press.
We appreciate each of you for being here today and for
providing your testimony.
Mr. Bennett, we begin with you. Please, each one of you as
you speak, turn your microphones on. And, Mr. Bennett, you are
recognized for 5 minutes for an opening statement.
STATEMENTS OF RICHARD BENNETT, FOUNDER, HIGH TECH FORUM; PETER
RYSAVY, PRESIDENT, RYSAVY RESEARCH; PAUL W. SCHROEDER,
DIRECTOR, PUBLIC POLICY AND STRATEGIC ALLIANCES, AIRA TECH
CORPORATION; MATTHEW F. WOOD, POLICY DIRECTOR, FREE PRESS AND
THE FREE PRESS ACTION FUND
STATEMENT OF RICHARD BENNETT
Mr. Bennett. Good morning, Chairman Blackburn, and hello to
Chairman Walden, Ranking Member Doyle, and Ranking Member
Pallone, and members of the committee, especially Ms. Eshoo,
whose district I used to live in and who gave me a really hard
time the first time I testified before this committee, but I
probably deserved it.
Prioritization has been part of the internet's design from
the beginning in that there is a type of service field in the
internet protocol header, and it's been refined through
integrated services, a standard design in the 1990s, then
differentiated services, so there is not by itself anything
controversial about prioritization.
And I think it's fair to say that, while it was
controversial for a time, it's come to be recognized there is a
consensus sort of support that, done correctly, prioritization
is beneficial to applications.
So we have reached this consensus, I think, after about 15
years of debate around what we call net neutrality now, that
it's legitimate for ISPs, CDNs, transit networks, and purpose-
built networks like WebEx to accelerate time-sensitive traffic.
If you go back to the original paper that Chairman Wheeler
wrote on net neutrality, he points out that the internet is
inherently biased against real-time applications as a class and
biased in favor of content applications, and I think if we are
not careful about how we treat paid prioritization we can make
that bias worse, and that's something we should try to avoid.
I think we also--going back to the consensus question--we
also believe that competition is a good thing. We want tech
policies that increase that.
So prioritization and the related technologies such as
resource reservation, traffic shaping, and dynamic path
selection have not only become commonplace, but I think they
are widely regarded as essential to certainly the real-time
applications part of the internet.
And this is good, because no matter how much capacity
networks have, we can also always make their operation more
efficient if we apply optimization techniques. There are
certain problems that we solve without optimization that you
can't really build your way out of simply by throwing more
capacity at the problem.
It's like trying to solve, you know, throwing money at
problems that you don't really understand.
And I think we appreciate that prioritization mechanisms
such as the IEEE 802.11(e) standard that I helped design are
beneficial to real-time applications such as voice in the same
way that LTE bearers are.
The fact that one is provided free on a closed enterprise
network and the other is sold as part of a bundle that includes
carrier grade voice I think doesn't really impact on their
utility. These are useful things. We found that, by
prioritizing voice and Wi-Fi, we get four times as many voice
calls through a Wi-Fi network.
But it's hard to explain the continual increases in
broadband speed we have seen in the U.S. over the last 10
years--speed improves 35 percent per year--without giving some
credit to the expectation of profit.
The fact that web speeds have stagnated over this same
period, even declining in 2016, suggests something is wrong
with the web's financial model, and I think you, the committee,
explored that last week.
But leaving the consumer broadband market questions aside,
paid prioritization internet optimization is very important to
enterprises that have to connect, say, branch offices to
headquarters.
The traditional way to do that was to lease--and in some
cases still is widely done--people lease business data services
lines like a T1 for $300 a month, and it only gives you 1.5
megabits per second.
But with prioritization, you could actually--with the
proper management, you could actually use a public common
internet connection to connect the branch office to the
headquarters.
And so now you're getting 50 to 250 megabits per second for
less than $100 a month. But this only works--you can only have
that cost savings if someone is prioritizing the traffic on
that pipe.
So let's bear in mind that, while there are fees for these
things, the alternatives can also be quite costly.
So it's important, I think, to recognize the internet is no
longer just a research network. The internet is the network. It
has replaced all the other--I mean, not quite completely, but
in the next few years, all the other networks are going to be
subsumed by the internet.
So we can't apply the sort of, oh, like, research network
standards to the internet. We have to recognize that the
fundamental requirement is that it serves all the needs of all
the used cases of all the people who connect to it.
And I think whatever it takes to do that is fine, you know,
given the proper oversight.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Bennett follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mrs. Blackburn. The gentleman yields back.
STATEMENT OF PETER RYSAVY
Mr. Rysavy. Chairman Blackburn, Ranking Member Doyle, and
other distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for
the opportunity to testify at this important hearing.
I am president of Rysavy Research, an analyst in the
wireless industry with more than 25 years of experience. When I
started, the hot new wireless technology was 1G.
I am an expert in wireless technology. I've worked with
many dozens of firms and have published more than 175 reports
and articles. My testimony is on 5G.
5G will start to be deployed as early as this year--end of
this year--and will become the dominant wireless technology
through the 2020s. It is being designed and developed by
organizations, individuals from all over the world, and will
employ sophisticated mechanisms to handle different kinds of
traffic flows.
This is critical because 5G is being designed to address a
much wider range of use cases than prior generations of
technology.
Many of the applications envisioned for 5G are of a control
nature, and that means they need minimal delay and high
reliability.
These types of applications, whether it's controlling
drones in real time or robots or sending emergency messages to
autonomous vehicles, will depend on traffic prioritization.
5G's reliance on traffic prioritization should not be
viewed as problematic for internet traffic that will not be
prioritized. Traffic differentiation and prioritization is not
a zero sum game.
You can prioritize certain traffic flows without adversely
affecting other users' applications. The goal in managing
network traffic is to maximize the quality of experience across
the entire subscriber base.
5G needs QoS management not only for traffic prioritization
to support mission critical applications but also enable a
fundamental architectural component called network slicing.
Again, 5G is being designed and developed for cellular
operators to deploy on a global basis. Network slicing,
implemented through virtualization, will allow an operator to
provide different services with different performance
characteristics customized for the specific use cases involved,
such as those needing low latency enhanced reliability.
Even with new spectrum and expected peak throughputs that
will exceed a gigabit per second, 5G networks will still have
to manage latency, reliability, massive numbers of connections,
and a mix of stationary and mobile users.
Capacity alone is not the solution. The United States has
assumed global leadership in 4G. It enjoys deep LTE 4G
penetration, leading smartphone platforms and the vibrant
application ecosystem. But globally, countries and companies
are investing in and concentrating on what will come next with
5G.
Constraining 5G with rules that restrict traffic management
necessary for the traffic flows anticipated with 5G
applications could threaten U.S. leadership in mobile
technology and deployment.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rysavy follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mrs. Blackburn. The gentleman yields back.
Mr. Schroeder, you are recognized for 5 minutes, and I will
give you a warning at 30 seconds. How's that?
STATEMENT OF PAUL W. SCHROEDER
Mr. Schroeder. Thank you very much. Good morning. I think
the microphone is on.
Thank you, Chairman Blackburn, members of the subcommittee.
Very pleased to be with you this morning. My name is Paul
Schroeder, and I am here on behalf of Aira, a San Diego-based
technology company.
Our groundbreaking service provides instant access to
visual information for people who are blind or visually
impaired. As such, our service relies on the transmission of
streaming video from the network edge through mobile up to the
internet without interruption at high speeds to ensure ultra-
low latency connection between the blind individual and the
remotely located sighted assistant who is providing information
based on the video feed.
We leverage mobile communications as well as innovative
technologies such as the smart glasses that I am wearing, and
yes, there is a camera in the middle of these glasses that is
connected to an agent as we speak. We also use GPS and other
sensors, augmented reality, and are incorporating machine
learning.
Besides the technology, Aira's success really depends on
our human agents. They are highly trained, they are paid, they
are held to a confidentiality requirement, and they do undergo
background checks before they serve as an agent.
Our customers--we call them explorers--pay for access to a
fixed number of minutes per month. We are, though, working with
agencies such as the Department of Veterans Affairs to ensure
that blind veterans have access to this critical service.
I also want to note that Congressman Peters and Congressman
Rutherford have been very helpful in leading a bipartisan
effort to ensure that the VA is paying attention to these new
technologies.
This week, Aira has designated the congressional office
buildings as free Aira zones. This was a choice we made because
there is a large group of individuals who are blind visiting
this week, and we know that this will help them navigate the
halls of Congress more effectively.
We encourage others to do this, and I do want to note for
Chairman Blackburn, your home State airport of Memphis was the
first one to join the Aira Airport Network, paying for the
minutes of Aira users at Memphis airport in order to get around
the airports more effectively.
Yesterday, two of our Aira explorers ran the Boston
Marathon using Aira. Now, most of us, blind or sighted,
probably aren't going to run a marathon. But the test of a low-
latency available network was put to the test at the marathon,
and many of us will have opportunities to test that in other
environments, for example, hustling through an airport trying
to find the gate for our airplane, checking out bus signs in a
crowded bus garage to figure out the one that we need, quickly
looking at a chart or slide in a meeting or a classroom, or
maybe a congressional hearing, in order to get the information
from that slide as a person who's blind, putting information
into these kiosks that are popping up everywhere in order to
order or confirm a reservation, and, of course, reading a
medication label to ensure that we are actually taking the
right medication.
For those of us who are blind or visually impaired using
Aira, we need instant access to this information. We need a
network that is reliable and a network that has low latency,
because our video is able to stream upward from the mobile
edge.
We are particularly pleased to note our partner AT&T has
offered dynamic traffic management to Aira to ensure that our
users have the low-latency network and reliable connectivity
that they need and our agents need as well.
I am pleased to say this morning I am joined by an agent--
Amy, are you there?
Agent. I am. Good morning, Paul.
Mr. Schroeder. Oh, I left the speaker by the phone. Do you
want to do a very quick description of the room, please?
Agent. Absolutely. I see three rows of a desk and that have
white wood on the bottom of them and then a darker mahogany on
the top of the desk and they are separated by an aisle in the
middle, and the very back of the room has a single panel of
speakers. I see the chairwoman is in the very middle of the
room. A gentleman to her left is waving at me.
[Laughter.]
Agent. American flags that are flanking the center----
Mrs. Blackburn. Thirty seconds.
Agent [continuing]. Three windows directly across----
Mr. Schroeder. I am going to have you hold up, and we'll
come back to you if there's a question for the agent.
We are investing in artificial intelligence as well so that
we can bring automation to our service, and we are, of course,
looking forward to the emergence of 5G, which will help our
low-latency network and service be even stronger.
Finally, I just want to say we encourage policymakers to
support policies and programs that will promote and expand
reliable access to visual information such as what Aira is
providing as a right to those of us who are blind or visually
impaired.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Schroeder follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mrs. Blackburn. The gentleman yields back.
Mr. Wood, 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF MATTHEW F. WOOD
Mr. Wood. Chairman Blackburn and Ranking Member Doyle, and
members of the subcommittee, thank you for having me here today
to testify.
Free Press is a nonpartisan nonprofit with 1.4 million
members, and we were founded 15 years ago to elevate people's
voices in policy decisions that shape our media.
Today, we believe that achieving racial justice and social
justice require equitable access to technology and information.
That's why we work on net neutrality.
We supported the strong rules recently and wrongly repealed
by the FCC, and we support Congressman Doyle's resolution to
restore them, and we are not alone.
Hundreds of members have cosponsored that resolution in the
House and Senate. Thousands of businesses and organizations and
State and local officials support it, too.
Millions of people have made their voices heard, first at
the FCC and then in these halls, opposing that repeal and
calling on you to pass the CRA.
That's not surprising, because, as Mr. Doyle noted, poll
after poll shows the net neutrality rules enjoy tremendous
popular support across party lines.
One poll last summer showed that 72 percent of Republicans
supported the 2015 rules. Another taken before the FCC's
December vote found that 83 percent of all respondents oppose
that repeal.
Free Press supports restoring the entire 2015 order because
we need more than three bright lines to preserve the open
internet. We need FCC authority to prevent new forms of
discrimination and also to address digital divides, protect
privacy, and promote competition.
Yet some people claim that paid prioritization bans are
harmful and they say that ISPs should be able to charge new
kinds of fees and that internet users and businesses would
benefit from such new charges.
They also say this would help with last-mile congestion
without explaining its scope or accounting for the ways the
networks already deal with that.
As a general matter, prioritizing rather than building
capacity to solve any last-mile congestion over a sustained
period would let ISPs profit from artificial scarcity.
It would let them charge more to get through the bottleneck
rather than building a bigger path. So paid prioritization is
not just a solution in search of a problem, it's a toll booth
in search of a traffic jam.
ISPs' own data shows that under Title II, both broadband
investment and deployment speeds increased markedly in rural
and urban areas alike.
Despite that evidence, some still insist that strong rules
made ISPs invest too little. Now, funnily enough, we are told
that the rules may make ISPs invest too much by requiring them
to build both excess capacity instead of prioritizing their way
out of congestion.
Whatever the investment incentives of the paid
prioritization ban, discarding this rule would cause a radical
change to the internet.
That ban prohibited ISPs favoring traffic only in exchange
for payment from a third party or to benefit an ISP's
affiliates such as video or voice offers.
In other words, it did not ban the kinds of user-directed
and application-driven traffic management techniques praised by
others here today.
Those kinds of practices leave ISPs' customers in control
when it comes to choosing how to use those connections, and
those customers already can and do choose to buy faster speed
tiers when they so desire.
They could even buy what's called a quality of service tier
to use on applications of their choosing and at times of their
own choosing.
Longstanding network protocols also can and do make these
kinds of choices neutrally. ISPs don't need to inspect our
internet traffic as they transmit it or to second guess how to
treat it.
The paid priority rule banned none of these network
management techniques. It applied only if the ISP tried to make
a content provider pay extra just to reach broadband customers
or just to cut in line ahead of other traffic.
People already pay for their connections. The websites and
apps they visit should not suddenly be asked to do so too. So
if I visit marshablackburn.com or mikedoyleforcongress.com on
my home connection, those websites don't have to pay my ISP to
reach me.
Let me be clear. I am not here to defend big edge providers
from such payments. I represent internet users. But letting
gatekeeper ISPs impose new tolls would distort the choices
users have and ISPs undoubtedly would get together with those
largest edge providers to set the terms and prices for any such
advantages.
It would be inefficient for every edge provider to have to
strike such deals with every ISP in the country, and signing up
for such deals means they'd be double charged for data that ISP
subscribers already paid to receive.
Academics can speculate that in a different kind of access
market such new fees might reduce subscriber costs. They still
do not explain why ISPs facing so little competition would have
any incentive to lower their retail prices.
So when ISP executives talk about paid prioritization, they
don't describe it as a way to reduce revenues or to replace the
source for those revenues. They talk about it as a chance to
increase their revenues.
That's why the notion that new ISP fees might benefit
internet users and reduce their prices brings to mind a joke
I've heard on several occasions. But with all due respect to
the originator of that joke, I think that the most terrifying
words in the language may be, ``I am from the cable company. I
am here to save you money.''
Thank you very much, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wood follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mrs. Blackburn. The gentleman yields back.
This concludes the testimony from our witnesses. We thank
you for that, and we will now move to our questions and
answers. I will begin and recognize myself for 5 minutes.
Mr. Bennett, I want to come to you first. I want to discuss
a tweet from Matthew Prince, the CEO of CloudFlare, from last
November.
This exchange occurred on the day the FCC made its
Restoring Internet Freedom order available to the public.
Someone tweeted a wish that a tech billionaire would buy out
the local ISP where Chairman Pai lives and throttle his
internet access in retaliation for reversing the previous
Commission's order.
Matthew Prince tweeted in reply, ``I could do this in a
different but equally effective way.'' He went on to say he had
sent a note to his general counsel to see if CloudFlare could
throttle Pai's access without breaking any laws.
This tweet certainly raises a number of questions, and in
fact it gave us the idea for this hearing. Was Matthew Prince
right, and if so, how could he have done this?
Mr. Bennett. Thank you for the question, Chairman
Blackburn.
I remember that exchange. I got involved in it myself,
actually. And I think what it illustrates is how the
construction of the internet, the structure of the
architecture, has changed since the sort of founding days of
even really since Tim Wu came up with the idea for net
neutrality.
So instead of it being a system that consists of users
attached, you know, with their computers and mobile devices to
an infrastructure that's provided only by internet service
providers, the infrastructure is actually--there's a lot going
on in the infrastructure today that didn't used to be there in
the very beginning, and content delivery networks have been
mentioned several times, and that's one example. Technically,
content delivery networks are edge services, but it turns out
that all parts of the edge are not equal. So if you put a
content delivery network on a portion of the edge close to the
end user, then you, by that very act of simply locating the
data there, you have moved the data to the head of a line that
other suppliers of information that could be, say, on an
average of half a nation away would have to join at the back--
you know, CDNs put you at the front.
So CloudFlare has a number of--they're actually quite
innovative products the company has. So it's sort of a--it's
hard to--I am not completely a fan, but some of the things
they're doing I think are very beneficial.
I think their primary product is the DDoS protection
mechanism so that, you know, sites can be subject to denial-of-
service attacks if they are on the wrong side of popular
opinion on certain topics, and CloudFlare came up with a way to
protect sites that are being hammered with denial-of-service
attacks by simply putting a really high bandwidth kind of
firewall in front of the site that could absorb the denial-of-
service attack and allow the website to continue to function.
Of course, that doesn't always work the way it's planned. I
used to be a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise
Institute, and we published a blog called Tech Policy Daily,
and we used CloudFlare's free service to protect the blog from
denial-of-service attacks. AEI's the kind of organization
that's sort of a target for a lot of that sort of antisocial
behavior.
But I ran into a situation once where I was unable to
access a post that I would written for the blog from my home in
Colorado due to a misconfiguration of the CloudFlare.
The CloudFlare had changed some IP addresses. They hadn't
told the people at AEI, and so the AEI server, which was not
actually owned or controlled by CloudFlare--it was just behind
the CloudFlare firewall--was unreachable to me. But people in
DC could see it just fine. So it's, like, they were saying,
``Why is this a problem?''
Mrs. Blackburn. Let me interject and ask you one more
question on this. You talked about the CDNs, and as we look at
an individual user's access to certain content, who else within
this ecosystem would have the opportunity to control that
access or to control the speed of the individual's access?
Mr. Bennett. Well, the CDNs dump so much traffic on the
internet I think, as it's covered in the background memo for
the hearing, that they're actually in a position to affect the
rate at which non-CDN users can get their jobs done.
Mrs. Blackburn. OK. My time has expired.
Mr. Doyle.
Mr. Doyle. Thank you.
A number of witnesses mentioned that 5G will precipitate
the need for greater prioritization. If we dramatically
increase the capacity of the network service, do we also need
to dramatically increase our ability to manage the scarcity of
it?
Mr. Wood. I think not. Congestion doesn't solve every
problem, I heard other witnesses say, but it can solve a lot of
them, and as I noted in my testimony, certain kinds of
prioritization actually do happen already. The question really
is who's being made to pay for that.
Mr. Doyle. You know, a number of witnesses also said in
their testimony, they talked about the benefits of ISPs
prioritizing certain kinds of traffic over others--for
instance, live video, telemedicine, and online games.
But what happens when you take the choice away from
consumers of which packets get to them first and ISPs are
allowed to decide which applications and application providers
will have optimized access to consumers and which ones won't?
I mean, to me it seems like the ISPs get to pick who wins
and who loses. What do you think?
Mr. Wood. Thank you, Congressman.
Yes, we agree. We think retaining that user choice and the
rights that users have is very important. And so you're right
that certain kinds of traffic might have different network
needs at different times.
It should really be up to the user to choose not only which
kinds of traffic they might wish to pay for or prioritize but
also the source of that traffic. So will all video applications
be treated the same way? That's a very tough question to answer
when we are leaving that all within the ISPs' control.
Mr. Doyle. You know, let's talk a little bit about
competition. If ISPs were allowed to implement paid
prioritization for services such as telemedicine or other
services, do you think that would increase or decrease the
number of competitive offerings in that space?
Essentially, do you think small, rural health practices or
small startups would want to compete against large health
systems and the ISPs themselves or other large institutional
players?
Mr. Wood. Yes, Congressman. Thank you.
I think it would decrease the amount of competitors further
upstream, if you will. There's some notion that paid priority
could be used to level the playing field, I suppose, and let
the small businesses compete with the large businesses.
I can't see how that would work. I think that, if there
were paid prioritization allowed, then naturally the companies
with the deepest pockets and the providers with the biggest
bank accounts would pay for that prioritization.
It wouldn't be used to level the playing field. It would
just be used to tilt it even further.
Mr. Doyle. You know, a number of witnesses here today have
alleged that the Open Internet Order severely restricted the
types of network management an ISP could engage in.
They also alleged that certain types of specialized service
offerings such as telemedicine work prohibit it. Further, they
claim that prioritization is necessary to ensure the quality of
certain services, services, it seems to me, that might be best
served using business data services, which I see are claimed to
be too expensive.
What do you make of that?
Mr. Wood. Well, there's a lot there. I do think that the
Open Internet Order of 2015 did allow for reasonable network
management. It was the term of art used for several of the
rules. So even for blocking or for throttling, there were
network management exceptions.
For a prioritization, there was no such exception, but, of
course, as I noted this morning, the ban only applied to third-
party payments or prioritization done to benefit an affiliate
of the internet service provider.
So all kinds of applications could receive network
management. You mentioned specialized services and other kinds
of dedicated capacity. Those were fully allowed by the 2015
order, and, again, even when there is a use case for
prioritization on the open internet without going to a
specialized service or dedicated capacity, there are protocols
and methods for doing that today.
They just simply don't require the edge provider to pay on
top of what the broadband user is already paying for their
service.
Mr. Doyle. Right.
Mr. Wood, the ban on paid prioritization, or pay to play,
that was a fundamental part of net neutrality, and throughout
the proceeding to eliminate neutrality protections, Chairman
Pai repeatedly said that the 2015 net neutrality order was a
departure from the past.
Yet, as far back as the 1970s the Commission had identified
the potential harmful effects that could result when just a
handful of gatekeepers could control consumers' access to the
internet.
Has the internet always been open and free?
Mr. Wood. We certainly think so. In the old days, you might
call it, broadband providers were Title II providers. Your
dial-up service worked over a phone line, and that phone
company was subject to nondiscrimination rules.
So, although the legal ground for net neutrality has
shifted somewhat over the last decade as different
administrations have tried to do it in different ways, the
protections have always been there, and we think the 2015
version did the best job of restoring the protections we've
always had.
Mr. Doyle. So why were guardrails needed when the FCC
opened its proceeding that resulted in the recently overturned
net neutrality protection?
Mr. Wood. I am sorry. You said why were guardrails needed?
Mr. Doyle. Yes.
Mr. Wood. I am not sure I completely understand the
question. But we do think that keeping the protections we've
always had was the right move. I am not sure what guardrails
you're referring to in the new proceeding.
Mr. Doyle. No, in the recently overturned proceeding.
Mr. Wood. Yes. Well, I mean, again, these are fundamental
rights that we think deserve protection and always have had it
in some form or another, and so that's why we are looking to
restore it now.
Mr. Doyle. I see my time has expired.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mrs. Blackburn. Gentleman yields back.
Mr. Shimkus, you're recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Shimkus. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Great hearing, interesting issue, contentious views. I want
to start with Mr. Schroeder, and I want to, one, thank you for
being here, and secondly, I was watching your hands. Were you
reading Braille or how was--how did you read to us your
testimony? What was going on down there?
Mr. Schroeder. Yes, I was. I am reading off of a small
Braille device. It's essentially a Braille computer that has my
summarized testimony.
Mr. Shimkus. Great. And where is the lady who's assisting
you through your glasses and the video? Where is actually she
physically located?
Mr. Schroeder. Amy is in San Diego currently.
Mr. Shimkus. Great. Great. So----
Mr. Schroeder. I am taking the headphone out so she can
talk if you have a question for her.
Mr. Shimkus. I hope that you have a good working
environment, Amy.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Schroeder. You know, one of the things we found when
our agents--and Amy was our lead agent and the person that
developed a lot of the training that the agents now go
through--she is a company employee in San Diego.
But our agents love Aira, as you can imagine. They are
paid, as I mentioned. It's largely home-based employment, and
as long as they've got a good internet connection, they are
able to provide the support for Aira users, and there's a lot
of satisfaction, I know, among our agents and the kind of work
that they do from the tedious work of getting somebody through
an airport or the very exciting work of actually being able to
work with somebody who's touring Paris.
Mr. Shimkus. Yes. In your testimony then--you can put her--
you can put her down.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Shimkus. I don't think I've got questions for----
Mr. Schroeder. I'm putting you down, Amy.
Mr. Shimkus. Yes. In your testimony you talked about your
relationship with AT&T and then the Aira accessibility of
Government buildings this week or while there are numerous
people who have impaired vision that's on the Hill.
And so it's tied into this hearing. Why do you think you
were invited here to testify?
Mr. Schroeder. I think Aira has an interesting case to
make. We've been clear from the beginning we don't really--as
you know if you looked at our company references, we don't
really have--we haven't stated a position on this particular
topic.
But Aira has a very interesting case to make regarding
prioritization, and as I noted it's an upstream priority. So
typically when we talk about this issue of prioritized content
and access to content, it's usually ensuring that users have
access to content, and the discussion tends to revolve around
making sure that the content goes downstream in an orderly
fashion.
We are the other side of that case. We need to send video
upstream and, as you know, often upload speeds don't match
download speeds.
And so our critical case to make is that our service can't
work if we don't have priority low-latency access. I think we
talk about 80 milliseconds is what we try to achieve, or
better, of latency because, if somebody is out and about
moving, they really do need that instant video feedback that
the agent can then provide--that that video in the opposite
direction of what we usually talk about in these networking----
Mr. Shimkus. Yes. It's excellent testimony, and you can
just see someone trying to cross a busy street and then being--
feedback is delayed. That's a dangerous proposition to be had.
I just think it really does speak to--it's not as simple as
people like to portray this debate.
And I want to go to Mr.--``Ri-say-vy''?
Mr. Rysavy. ``Ri-sah-vy.''
Mr. Shimkus. Rysavy. You say it's not a zero sum game.
Explain that. Because that's the whole debate. You know, net
neutrality--there's winners and losers--Mr. Wood articulates
that very--but you say it's not. You can't put it in that--in
that----
Mr. Rysavy. It is absolutely not a zero sum game.
Mr. Shimkus. And explain that.
Mr. Rysavy. The reason is that different applications have
different requirements. If I am trying to send a short message
to an autonomous vehicle that there's a pedestrian in the road
around the corner that the car can't see, that traffic does not
have to adversely affect a video streaming application that
already has a buffer and already has tolerance for delay in how
it receives its packets.
Mr. Shimkus. So, and then someone else mentioned it's
really not a highway. It's a network of networks.
Mr. Rysavy. Yes.
Mr. Shimkus. And so there's other--and Mr. Bennett, in your
testimony you talk about how you can manipulate a portion of
the network to actually slow up the process where the, quote,
unquote, ``pie'' may get the original one.
Great hearing, Madam Chairman. I wish I had more time, but
I don't, and I yield back.
Mrs. Blackburn. The gentleman yields back.
Let's see. So Ms. Eshoo, 5 minutes.
Ms. Eshoo. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
Again, thank you to the witnesses. I have to say that from
the first three, I haven't heard any of you just clearly
address why you think paid prioritization is a good idea.
We just heard the exchange with Mr. Shimkus and the witness
about different uses of the internet, but you didn't bring up
why one case or another should have paid prioritization.
So you know where I am, but I think that your job is to try
to dissuade me or bring new facts to the table, and, most
frankly, I didn't hear them.
I think that paid prioritization really needs to be
examined for exactly what it is. There are many uses on the
internet. But, you know, I think that we are going to--here at
the committee we have many Members, including myself, that are
fighting very hard for rural areas in our country to receive
broadband. Some are underserved. Others are not served as they
should be.
Put paid prioritization on top of that. How fair is that to
those people? You know, the idea is to move it faster, quicker,
fairer, expand it so that there's more information to the many
in a democracy.
So, to Mr. Wood, can you explain the distinction between--
because this term is being thrown around--specialized services
and paid prioritization?
And also, you refer to your, in your testimony, to new
forms of discrimination, and I think that that is--you know,
that could crop up, and if you can expand on that a little I
would appreciate it.
Mr. Wood. Sure. Thank you, Congresswoman.
Specialized services is a term that the FCC has used over
the last several years. You might think of it as dedicated
access. And so I don't know Aira's business model completely,
but a purchaser of a device might not actually be using that
device on their own broadband network.
The device might bring the broadband with it, if you will,
and that's a way, if there is a need for prioritization and
even for the application waiver----
Ms. Eshoo. And that was included in the 2015 rule, right?
Mr. Wood. It was, and 2010 as well, and this is the kind of
thing we've always seen with----
Ms. Eshoo. And the court upheld that.
Mr. Wood. That's true.
Ms. Eshoo. Very importantly, the courts upheld that. Mm-
hmm. I am sorry, go ahead.
Mr. Wood. And then, as to new forms of discrimination, we
just believe that the kinds of things Chairman Blackburn was
describing--for example, distortion further into the network or
especially at interconnection points, as they're called, where
the last-mile broadband network receives all this traffic that
their users are subscribing for--the users are requesting, and
if it can't get to them due to some sort of blockage further up
the line or if there is some kind of new form of discriminatory
treatment towards the broadband providers and users, we would
like the FCC to have the ability to assess that and determine
the statute is unreasonable discrimination to assess whether a
tactic or a technique is actually benefiting users or hurting
them.
Ms. Eshoo. Is there anything that you know of, that you can
think of, that makes the case for paid prioritization plausible
or acceptable?
Mr. Wood. I mean, as I said, some people might postulate
that it would save money for the broadband providers'
customers. We just haven't seen that happen, and when you have
so few choices among broadband providers----
Ms. Eshoo. Well, how do you save money if you're paying
more?
Mr. Wood. Well, you wouldn't be saving money. I think that,
you know, sometimes there's a notion that if the edge provider
pays, the user won't have to, and what we think of this as is
more double charging.
The broadband provider's customer continues to pay for
their access, and then the two-sided market, or the handout in
the other direction, says now the edge provider pays as well.
So, as I said, I don't think that the ISPs think of this as
a way to save money.
Ms. Eshoo. Yes, it's about as clear as fog. Yes.
Well, I just--I wish I heard a very clear case from the
wonderful first three witnesses on why paid prioritization is a
very good thing for anyone using the internet, and I haven't
heard it.
I admire the different services that you have referred to
and all of that, but I think that we've got some fog in this
hearing, and paid prioritization is paid prioritization.
I don't find anything foundational and positive about it.
Thank you to all of you, and I yield back.
Mrs. Blackburn. The gentlelady yields back.
Mr. Latta, you're recognized.
Mr. Latta. Well, thank you very much, Madam Chair, and
thanks for our witnesses. As my friend from Illinois said, this
has been a very interesting hearing. I appreciate you all being
here to give your testimony today.
Mr. Bennett, if I could start my questioning with you. What
are the impacts of traffic management on different
applications? And if all video conferencing applications such
as Skype or Facetime were in the same traffic lane as general
email traffic, how would that impact each service?
Mr. Bennett. Thank you for the question.
The network operators have to manage a pool of resources,
and one of the resources that's really critical is what
engineers call latency. It's delay. It's how long it takes a
packet to get from one point to another.
Low latency is a resource that networks never have an
infinite supply of. It always has to be managed.
So it's very important for these video conferencing apps to
have low latency because, if they don't, the picture breaks up,
you hear, like, dropouts in the audio channel, and the overall
accuracy and the feeling of sort of presence of being as if
you're in the same room with the person you're talking to, you
can't achieve that without very low latency.
Latency doesn't make any difference to email applications.
I mean, they're perfectly fine with, you know, and network time
is measured in, units of, like, millionths and billionths of a
second, and email operates more at the level of, like, minutes
and hours.
So, I mean, it doesn't really matter. So when we assign,
effectively, low latency to an email packet that doesn't need
it simply because we are sending packets in the order they were
received or in some other sort of semirandom order, we are
wasting a resource.
And so it's actually--I think it's a bit irresponsible to
just sort of treat all traffic the same, because that means we
are ignoring the fundamental requirements that the users of
those services have.
Mr. Latta. Thank you.
Mr. Rysavy, if I could ask you--in my district and across
the country, there's a great deal of interest in manufacturing
and other sectors that we see increased efficiency from the
Internet of Things.
IOT will be made of next-generation sensors and automated
equipment such as drones and robots that can provide real-time
and HD video imaging, audio, and other bandwidth-intensive
sensing, monitoring, automated processes.
In a world without prioritization, can the Internet of
Things become a reality?
Mr. Rysavy. It would come to a very partial reality. The
fact is that the application and quality of service
requirements for different applications vary.
So there may be some IOT applications that don't need
prioritization. But to expand the number of applications to
allow innovators the full range of everything that is possible,
many of these techniques of quality-of-service management will
be essential.
Mr. Latta. OK. Well, just a quick follow-up then: So what
would that mean for overall U.S. competitiveness in
manufacturing?
Mr. Rysavy. The more artificial restrictions that there are
on what kind of applications can be deployed, the less
competitive industry will be because you can be assured that
other countries who wish to dominate in this space are not
going to handicap their technologies.
Mr. Latta. OK.
Mr. Bennett, going back, if I could, to you, we often hear
about how ISPs prioritize packets that manage traffic
congestion to complete a user-friendly experience.
However, we see edge providers pay to prioritize search
results, advertising, social network feeds, shopping options,
et cetera. Given that this form of paid prioritization is
happening every day, I would like to understand the impact that
it has on consumers.
Mr. Bennett. Thanks for the questions.
Yes, we can see some of the impact of the prioritization of
search results and how the market has changed for product
search. For a very long time, Google was the dominant company
in product search.
But nowadays more people begin product searches on Amazon
than do it on Google, and I don't know exactly why that is
happening, but I think it has something to do with the fact
that, when you do a Google search, the first few answers you
get are all paid ads, and they're not always very relevant, you
know, to what you're doing, and they're certainly not as
trustworthy as the organic search.
So prioritization, I think, in that sense the company
should realize that they've actually hurt their market position
by distorting their search results that way and by the fact
that the Google search is just not as effective as it used to
be.
Mr. Latta. Well, thank you very much.
Madam Chair, my time has expired.
Mrs. Blackburn. The gentleman yields back.
Ms. Clarke, you're recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Clarke. I thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and I thank our
expert witnesses for their testimony here this morning.
And given that I also serve on the Small Business
Committee, I strongly believe and maintain that the rollback of
net neutrality is going to have a hugely detrimental effect on
small businesses, and I am not alone in this belief.
Polling indicates that an overwhelming majority of
respondents are concerned that the elimination of net
neutrality could disadvantage small businesses by allowing big
national chains to put their online services in a fast lane.
A number of small businesses in my district back in
Brooklyn have been outspoken about this--small businesses like
TakeShape and Staffbase--and I could co-sponsor the CRA to
reinstate net neutrality in part due to their concerns.
Given that, Madam Chairwoman, I would like to introduce a
letter for the record and this record--it opposes the FCC's
rollback of net neutrality and it's signed by 800 small
businesses.
Mrs. Blackburn. Without objection.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The information has been retained in committee files and also
is available at https://docs.house.gov/Committee/Calendar/
ByEvent.aspx?EventID=108168.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ms. Clarke. I thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Wood, why are small businesses so concerned about the
rollback of net neutrality, and why is rolling back the ban on
paid prioritization worrying these businesses?
Mr. Wood. Thank you, Congresswoman.
I think it's pretty clear and simple: They don't want to
have to pay extra to deliver their content to their customers.
Now, it's not true that they're not paying. They pay a lot
to get their content onto the internet, and they pay their own
broadband provider, or sometimes they're even able to build
their own connections.
What we are talking about here is then paying my ISP at
home separate charge either to cut in line in front of somebody
else or perhaps just to get the traffic to me in the first
place, and it's that extra and, frankly, new toll that I think
has small businesses worried.
I saw the poll that I think you're referring to, and it was
something like 4 to 1 small businesses opposed to the repeal
and worried about paid priority.
A large number of them are uncertain how it would affect
their business, so I find it funny that, in the name of
creating more certainty, we've actually created great
uncertainty for small businesses who thought this was
unsettled.
But that's the kind of fear they're facing is, ``Are there
going to be new tolls and new charges that I must pay just to
get my content to my customers?''
Ms. Clarke. Very well.
I've also been a strong advocate of diversity in
traditional media companies, and that's why, along with my
colleagues, I've created the Multicultural Media Caucus here in
the House.
The sad truth is that diverse voices are seldom truly
represented in traditional media but that neutrality can in
some ways help fix that problem.
Mr. Wood, why is net neutrality important for groups that
are not well represented in traditional media?
Mr. Wood. Thank you, Congresswoman. I think it's for
exactly that reason it does. It doesn't eliminate all barriers,
but it lowers the barriers to speaking in one's own voice and
getting your story out there.
And so, traditionally communities of color have not been
well represented on the airwaves. The internet helps to change
that.
Again, I think the notion that some have tried to put
forward in this hearing is that prioritization and paid
prioritization could help them compete with the biggest content
providers, and I just can't see how that would work.
I think if we did allow for paid prioritization, then the
traditional media companies would be the first in line and the
highest bidders for such slots and that the less well-known and
well-established media companies and voices would be pushed to
the back of the line.
Ms. Clarke. Very well, and I remain concerned about the
impact paid prioritization can have on innovation and new ideas
and on new products.
When a programmer in my district comes up with the next big
idea, how can we help ensure her focus is on connecting with
her users? And this question is to Mr. Wood and Mr. Schroeder.
Mr. Wood. I will go just because my mic's on.
I think this is how we can do it, is by preserving the
internet as it always has been, where people pay their own
broadband connection but then they're not asked to pay an
additional toll just to reach the other side of that connection
and we have each side of the conversation paying for their
connectivity but not this extra toll where the ISP charges in
both directions.
Mr. Schroeder. Thank you for the question, Congresswoman.
I think for Aira, we are a company that serves a rather
small and underserved customer base providing a unique service,
right. So people who are blind or visually compared constitute,
you know, maybe 23 million of the population.
The people who need our service don't really have an
adequate technology-based solution. What most people would do
is try to find a sighted assistant to provide some access to
visual information, and there isn't always a sighted assistant
around and, frankly, there isn't always a competent sighted
assistant around to provide access to information.
Getting to our users has been a real challenge. But to
answer maybe the question you didn't ask, but for us, one of
the limitations we worry about is--and one of the things we've
seen before we had access to the dynamic traffic management
that AT&T offers on its essentially high-priority private
network--is that our users were not able to get their video
through in a way that actually worked, because there were too
many lags, too many delays, and too many dropped calls. And so
they weren't able to have access to competent assistants using
the Aira model.
Ms. Clarke. I thank you, Mr. Schroeder, and I yield back,
Madam Chair.
Mrs. Blackburn. The gentlelady yields back.
Mr. Guthrie, 5 minutes.
Mr. Guthrie. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman, and
appreciate the hearing.
And this question is for Mr. Bennett, probably continuing
on some of the same theme. I would like to discuss the debate
over ISPs taking advantage of their gatekeeper position at the
last-mile connection points by prioritizing content delivery
for those who pay the most or even holding content hostage, and
the counter position that they wouldn't have a viable business
model if they did this.
I may be oversimplifying this, but it seems to boil down to
questions about relative bargaining positions within edge
providers and ISPs and who has the unique advantage in this
regard.
So the question: In the development of the internet as we
know it today, has there been a need for or practice of paying
for priority of content delivery over the last mile?
Mr. Bennett. It certainly hasn't been a widespread
practice, if it has existed at all. There have been certainly a
lot of claims that ISPs were holding certain content providers
hostage for payment.
In 2014, Netflix accused the major ISPs of doing that to
them, but it turns out the network that was actually slowing
their traffic down was their transit provider, Cogent. The ISPs
didn't really have anything to do with it.
Mr. Guthrie. So if it exists, you don't know of it? Is that
what you're saying?
Mr. Bennett. It certainly hasn't been widespread. I mean,
in fact, I would like to see more willingness on the part of
ISPs to sell prioritized delivery to application providers that
had real-time apps, you know, like video conferencing and have
never really seen much reason how that would benefit them to
sell that service, because it would actually make third parties
able to provide voice and face time just as well as the native
products sold by the ISPs. This is especially the case at the
wireless ISPs.
Mr. Guthrie. So who has the stronger bargaining position
over the last mile and what if an ISP with less than a million
customers is dealing with an edge provider that has tens of
millions of customers for their platform services?
Mr. Bennett. Well, the day an ISP announces that it's not
going to allow Netflix to use its network because, you know, it
has some dispute and it's not getting the money, that's pretty
much the day that you should short that ISP, as they're--nobody
has the kind of bargaining position that Amazon and Netflix and
Google have.
Those are regarded as essential services by users of ISPs.
There's no way the ISP can mess with them.
Mr. Guthrie. Because a lot of my ISPs at the last mile are
local--like, utilities, Bardstown City Cable is the ISP. Logan
Telephone and Telegraph is the ISP for the last mile for a lot
of the areas there that wouldn't have that kind of bargaining
power that you're talking about.
In your testimony also, you say sharing is inherent in the
internet's design and go on to say access to shared resources
of any kind implies the development and implementation of the
sharing policy.
Can you elaborate on what options network operators have to
manage shared access to a scarce resource? In particular, how
does class of service or smart queuing techniques alleviate
congestion when network load increases to moderate or high
levels?
Mr. Bennett. Well, the purpose of class of service or type
of service in IP is for the application to identify--tell the
network what kind of service it needs, if it's a low precedence
or whether their focus is capacity or reliability.
The trouble with that is that, typically--and that's used
internally by ISPs once they're able to determine what
application generated a particular traffic stream, which they
can do with a fair degree of accuracy, but it's never going to
be 100 percent, especially as new applications emerge that the
ISP hadn't seen before and, like, ``How do I treat this? Do I
treat it just like generic traffic''--you know, which is
probably 95 percent or it could be as much as 95 percent of the
internet--``or do I give it some sort of specialized
treatment?'' And the specialized treatment could be, like, it
needs to be more urgently delivered than generic traffic, but
it also could be less.
And so there's a case to be made for, like, actually--if we
can recognize the unique performance characteristics of
different streams and then bargain appropriately, for some
streams they're going to save money, because if it's like a
patch distribution or something that can happen at 3 o'clock in
the morning, it doesn't make sense for the ISP to charge a
whole lot for that. In fact, it kind of makes sense to give it
away for free, because it makes the network work better if all
the computers are patched and up to date.
Mr. Guthrie. So who manages these techniques? I got about
10 seconds.
Mr. Bennett. Yes. They're managed by network operation
staff at the ISPs, and the tricky part, though, is that the
boundary's between different ISPs or different networks--
between an ISP and a transit network. And so they operate on
the basis of agreements and they typically don't articulate the
treatment of nonstandard----
Mr. Guthrie. Thank you. My time has expired. I yield.
Mrs. Blackburn. Mr. McNerney, you're recognized 5 minutes.
Mr. McNerney. I thank the Chair, and I thank the witnesses.
As an engineer, I am deeply concerned and troubled by the
FCC's decision to repeal the ban on paid prioritization and
kick the scraps of net neutrality over to the Federal Trade
Commission.
Mr. Wood, does the FTC have the resources to enforce net
neutrality?
Mr. Wood. Thank you, Congressman.
To my knowledge, they do not. They have an enforcement-
geared staff, and I think they do a good job but have trouble
keeping up with the current caseload that they have, my
understanding.
Mr. McNerney. I've heard they don't have any network
engineers. Is that right?
Mr. Wood. That's what I've heard as well, yes, Congressman.
Mr. McNerney. Well, I am concerned that, without an expert
agency with network engineers on the case, we might never know
if there are violations of net neutralities.
Back in 2007, we only discovered net neutrality violations
due to the work of an engineer working at home on his own.
Might it be difficult for the average consumer to recognize
their broadband provider is violating net neutrality?
Mr. Wood. Yes, Congressman, I think it could, and in fact,
with nobody to watch over that process, I do think that would
be a problem.
As we've heard, congestion can happen at different places
in the internet and different parts of the network. The Netflix
and Comcast disputes that Mr. Bennett referenced, a lot of
people called their Comcast customer service representatives
and said it's not coming through correctly, and the first
answer from the company was, ``Maybe you should buy a faster
speed tier,'' which wouldn't actually have solved the problem.
So I think even the people who work in the network, either
for good-faith reasons or marketing purposes, might not be able
to pinpoint where the problem is and then actually help the
customer to solve it.
Mr. McNerney. Thank you.
About veterans, in response to thousands of constituents
who reached to me concerning their concerns about the
elimination of net neutrality protections, I had a net
neutrality town hall in my district to discuss their concerns.
At the town hall, I heard from a veteran who was very
worried about what this would mean for him and other veterans,
including their access to health telenet services.
Mr. Wood, given your experience with net neutrality, do you
think veterans who need home telehealth services for in-home
care should be concerned about the FCC's rollback of net
neutrality?
Mr. Wood. I do, Congressman.
I think what they want is for the service to work, and so
as we've heard there could be different use cases, different
types of prioritization that the network already does to make
sure that all applications can reach their destination.
What I think veterans are worried about overseas is, ``I am
already paying for my connection, which might be difficult to
manage overseas, my family is paying at home''--is there going
to be a news hole or a new kind of charge to make sure that
traffic can actually reach his destination, and I think that's
where the concern comes from, that this will be a new fee
that's ultimately passed on to customers, even if it's the edge
provider who is paying it in the first place.
Mr. McNerney. Mr. Schroeder, do you have similar concerns
about access with net neutrality protections disappearing?
Mr. Schroeder. For the purposes of Aira's technology,
again, we are concerned that we have access to a cell network
that can deliver our video upstream in a way that is reliable.
I don't know that the end of the Open Internet Order would
adversely or would have changed our business model
significantly whether or not that order was in place.
I do think it is critical that we ensure that our veterans
have access to the kind of service that Aira is providing, and
I would say that, given the relatively underserved group that
we are reaching out to, my sense is that that's not a group
that probably gets priority under any structure.
And so, without a company like Aira really pushing that
issue and in our case having a good partner with AT&T in order
to allow us to use a priority network, I am not sure that that
service would be provided--our business model and our service
would be provided--in a way that actually works for people in
the real world, as we have to make it work.
Mr. McNerney. Has Aira come out in favor of Mr. Doyle's
CRA?
Mr. Schroeder. We have not taken a position on any of the
bills.
Mr. McNerney. You referred to low latency several times in
your testimony. Can you explain what that means?
Mr. Schroeder. Yes. Low latency means a connection with no
delays or minimal delays. And so, in our case, as we said, our
video needs to be able to move through at, you know, what we've
estimated currently ideally for Mbps.
We think, with the new glasses that I am wearing--these are
called Horizon--by the way, they're actually made almost
entirely in San Diego so it's all U.S.-based, we are proud to
say--that we may even need a little bit higher bandwidth in
order to ensure that the quality of the video that these
glasses are able to provide gets through.
And the comment about busy streets and crossing streets:
While Aira makes clear that we do not provide information to
somebody in the midst of a street crossing because we want them
to use their other skills, we do note that people need
information very rapidly and very immediately, including out on
the street in order to avoid obstacles.
Mr. McNerney. OK. Thank you.
I yield back.
Mrs. Blackburn. The gentleman yields back.
Mr. Olson.
Mr. Olson. I thank the Chair. Welcome to our four
witnesses.
This question is for the entire panel. Just go from your
right to left. Just give us your thoughts on prioritization.
My hometown of Houston, Texas, was hit by Hurricane Harvey
really hard this past August--hit us not once, hit us twice.
Some parts of my district had 50 inches of rain--almost 5 feet
of rain--in 2 days.
The amazing efforts of the Houston law and local first
responders before, during, and after Hurricane Harvey saved
thousands of lives.
With prioritization, isn't that important for our first
responders? Shouldn't their traffic be prioritized in times of
emergency?
Mr. Bennett.
Mr. Bennett. Yes, Congressman Olson, it certainly should--
and, as a former Houstonian who lived through Carla, quite
sensitive to, you know, what went on down there recently.
FirstNet is primarily--it's sort of, the value proposition
for FirstNet, other than interoperability between first
responders, is the ability to get, what do they call it,
prioritized quality--preemption and priority.
It's quality, preemption, and priority, so that first
responders not only can get a connection during times of
emergency, civilians want to use the networks and, you know,
call people and let them know they're OK or they're not OK, and
call for help, and all that. So there's a lot of pressure on
the networks from facilities being down and high usage and so
but, you know, we definitely want first responders to have
priority access.
Mr. Olson. Mr. Rysavy, your comments on priority access
during times of natural disaster like Hurricane Harvey.
Mr. Rysavy. Thank you, Congressman, for the question.
Yes, absolutely, that's a perfect example of a situation
where certain users such as the first responders do need
access. But it's just an example of many, because from there
you might consider a surgeon doing remote surgery--they might
need prioritization as well. Thank you.
Mr. Olson. Mr. Schroeder.
Mr. Schroeder. I think emergencies provide two interesting
examples of why Aira is so critical and why making sure that
our information is getting through.
The first one is a lot of the information that is provided
during an emergency is inherently visual. There's maps and
charts and graphics on television screens that indicate where
one is supposed to go, what the storm pattern is, that sort of
thing.
Without access to Aira, it is very difficult for a person
to get that information in a reliable sense. When somebody is
relocated--if you can imagine a person who's blind, they're in
an unusual setting--having access to Aira and a reliable visual
assistant will allow that person to have better access to the
shelter and have, of course, a better experience.
Somebody might say that that's perhaps not critical. I
would disagree. I think if somebody has relocated who's blind
or visually impaired, they certainly need to be able to access
the information around them successfully just like anybody else
who's been relocated to that area, and Aira--ensuring that our
video gets through is another way that that person is able to
have the information about where they are as well as things
that they need to know related to surviving that emergency.
Mr. Olson. Amen.
Mr. Wood, your comments on prioritization during natural
disasters.
Mr. Wood. Certainly. Thank you, Congressman.
Yes, first responders deserve priority during disasters. I
would say that was fully permitted under the 2015 rules that
have now been repealed.
And the last thing I would want is paid prioritization for
first responders. I can't imagine having the ambulance or the
fire department pay an additional toll on their way to the
emergency.
So I think that draws out the distinction we are talking
about here.
Mr. Olson. Good point.
The final question for you, Mr. Bennett. Your testimony
discussed internet optimization, and as you're well aware, we
are at the beginning of a huge data boom, another massive data
boom.
Could you elaborate on possible tools that could be used in
the future to help further efficiencies, to optimize the
internet traffic, and also what role does AI play in the
future?
Mr. Bennett. AI is going to be essential, I think, to
identifying traffic streams and mapping them to applications
and determining what kind of service they need.
The capability to do that has sort of increased an awful
lot in network routers over the years and, well, it's sort of
hard to draw the line between sort of better programming and
AI.
I mean, it definitely leans toward the side of AI, the kind
of intelligence that networks have to have these days.
Mr. Olson. My time has expired.
I yield back. Thank you.
Mrs. Blackburn. The gentleman yields back.
Mr. Engel, 5 minutes.
Mr. Engel. Thank you, Madam Chair and Ranking Member.
When Mark Zuckerberg was before our committee last week,
one of the things I asked him was about foreign influence on
our democracy.
In the FCC's docket that rolled back the ban on paid
prioritization and the other net neutrality protections,
Americans' identities were stolen and used to comment in
support of Chairman Pai's rollback of net neutrality.
It seems like another attempt at sowing division.
Mr. Wood, have you received any of these fake comments
filed in the FCC's docket?
Mr. Wood. Thank you, Congressman.
Have I seen them? Is that the question?
Mr. Engel. Yes.
Mr. Wood. I have seen some sampling of the 24 million
comments, yes, and I know that there have been allegations
about fake comments coming from foreign sources and from all
sides.
Mr. Engel. Do you think the FCC has done enough to address
the fake comments in the record?
Mr. Wood. No, I certainly don't. In fact, the attorney
general of New York has tried to launch an investigation on
behalf of New York State residents whose identities were stolen
and inappropriately used in the proceeding.
And I think it's fair to say the answer they've gotten from
the FCC has been something of a shoulder shrug to this point.
So I don't think the FCC has either used all of its own tools
or cooperated strongly enough with other law enforcement
agencies who want to look into this.
Mr. Engel. What else should they have done?
Mr. Wood. Well, I mean, I think it's a good question. We
want to have maximum participation in these public
decisionmaking processes.
So I don't know if there's much they could have done to
stop the inflow of any fake or fraudulent comments. I've heard
that even several Members of Congress had their names used,
including their street addresses. So it wasn't just a matter of
filling in a fake name.
I don't know what more they could have done at the
beginning. But I do think they should have paused and
considered what to do about the bad comments flowing into the
record during the process and then maybe should have taken
longer to consider what to do with them before voting.
Mr. Engel. Would you anticipate legal challenges to the
FCC's order repealing net neutrality based on the fake
comments?
Mr. Wood. Well, we have actually filed suit. Something like
23 attorneys general, a dozen or more public interest
organizations like ours, and internet companies as well, and
also some local--for example, Santa Clara County and the
California Public Utilities Commission.
I think that will be part of the case. I can't tell you how
much it will be part of the arguments or the judge's response
to it.
Mr. Engel. Mr. Wood, let me stick with you.
You testified that getting rid of paid prioritization would
radically change the internet. You said that the ban only
prevented ISPs from favoring traffic in exchange for payments
from third parties or to benefit an ISP's affiliated video or
voice offers. But it did not ban user-directed traffic.
So can you expand on that and explain a little more about
how user-directed traffic works?
Mr. Wood. Certainly. I hope so. The internet protocols that
already manage these kinds of different needs for different
types of applications, that goes on today. I think all the
witnesses have spoken about it to some degree, and that kind of
process was not prohibited by the paid prioritization ban.
All that the rule prohibited was having an edge provider or
some other third party come in and try to alter that natural
balancing that goes on.
If the balancing couldn't happen in what I would call a
neutral fashion, with the protocols just deciding which
applications need priority at that particular point in time,
then the user could also pay their broadband provider, and we
have more comfort with that because then the internet user
remains in control of how their connection is being used, so
which content they can get and also which type of application
and services they might need to or choose to prioritize at a
particular point in the day.
Mr. Engel. OK. Well, thank you very much.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I yield back.
Mrs. Blackburn. The gentleman yields back.
Mr. Bilirakis, 5 minutes.
Mr. Bilirakis. Thank you, Madam Chair. Appreciate it.
I want to thank the panel for their testimony as well.
Mr. Schroeder, as stated in your testimony, the speed of
your service is near instantaneous, and when you discuss how
the service is used not only for work-related tasks but helping
people navigate city streets, speed is, clearly, a requirement.
Isn't that the case?
Mr. Schroeder. Yes, Congressman Bilirakis.
Mr. Bilirakis. It seems your partnership with AT&T is
central to your service. Isn't that the case?
Mr. Schroeder. It is a very important element, yes.
Mr. Bilirakis. Can you describe how the user experience
would be different if Aira did not have this partnership and
had to compete equally with all other internet traffic?
Mr. Schroeder. I can, because we rolled out the
relationship with AT&T's Dynamic Traffic Management Network
about over the last four to six months.
Prior to that time, we got many complaints from our users,
and I am an Aira user myself and I also experienced many
dropped calls, many significant delays in video, many instances
where we had an audio connection with the agent but no video
and they did their best using GPS and other sensor data that we
were able to get upstream. But the lag in video created not
only trouble for our business model, because we are a service
that people subscribe to, but more important created challenges
for people who are blind who, in the midst of needing a sign
read to them, needing to make a decision about which direction
to go, needing to find that last--we often--you talk about the
last mile, we often talk about the last 20 feet, trying to find
the right door. And oftentimes that's when the video would,
unfortunately, kick out, and so just when you needed the
information most.
I know and I know our users experienced what the network
situation was like before we had access to a priority network,
and it was not a good experience.
Mr. Bilirakis. So you just described the latency
consequences?
Mr. Schroeder. That's correct.
Mr. Bilirakis. Yes. OK. Very good. Thank you.
Next question: As a relatively new company, did you find it
difficult to get a partner that would provide the
prioritization services that your company needs to operate?
Mr. Schroeder. You know, sometimes I am a little bit
embarrassed. Aira gets a lot of attention. I think a lot of
people find what we do to be quite remarkable and quite
amazing.
We actually had no trouble finding interest among carriers
to work with Aira and to allow us to or to encourage us to work
with their cell networks.
AT&T was the company that came through with the best
partnership and really showed the most interest in giving us
opportunity to work with their priority network as well as, as
I mentioned in my testimony, providing support for getting Aira
into the hands of college students and in working with us in
designing some of the technology that we are using, for
example, to get access to prescription medication, which is one
of the highest use cases that our Aira users often need to
ensure that they're taking the right medicine.
Mr. Bilirakis. That's great.
I want to commend you for working with our veterans as
customers, but also as employees. But I also want to give you
an opportunity, because I do have some time, to describe how
Aira works and how beneficial it is to your customers, if you
please. And so, if you can elaborate a little bit more on it,
because it is fascinating and it improves a person's quality of
life.
Mr. Schroeder. Thank you for that, Congressman Bilirakis,
and I appreciate your support as well. We have so many
wonderful stories from our Aira users who use the service, of
course, in critical ways like navigating the Boston Marathon--
which, trying to move among runners, as you can imagine, is a
very dicey proposition, especially in the weather conditions
they had yesterday, and it speaks to the need for having a very
strong network with low latency available to them.
We've also had individuals who have spent a few hours
working with an agent putting IKEA furniture together, and I
don't know if I should mention a specific company. But I think
we all know how challenging following some of those visual
directions if you can see can be.
Many of our users have found Aira to be extraordinarily
helpful in navigating technology. There's a lot of great
technology, such as what I am using here with this Braille
device that makes information available to blind people. But it
sometimes doesn't work. It sometimes breaks down, and when it
breaks down we are suddenly--we are confronted with a blank
screen--blank to us because we can't see it--and being able to
quickly grab an Aira agent via the smart glasses and
application allows us to have access to what is on that screen
so we can hopefully save our work and be able to continue to be
productive.
Oftentimes in the past--I know the time is up--but
oftentimes in the past, it would take several minutes or maybe
hours to find somebody sighted to come and help figure out what
was on that computer screen. Now we've got that instantaneous
with Aira.
Mr. Bilirakis. Well, thank you very much. And I know it's
very beneficial to our constituents. I appreciate it, and I
yield back, Madam Chair.
Mrs. Blackburn. The gentleman yields back.
Mr. Flores.
Mr. Flores. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Madam Chair, I would ask to enter into the record an
article written today by Roslyn Layton of AEI that's called
``Prioritization: Moving past prejudice to make internet policy
based on fact.''
Mrs. Blackburn. Without objection.
[The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.]
Mr. Flores. Thank you.
Mr. Bennett, talking about 5G for a minute, the next leap
in technology for wireless, does China have a ban on paid
prioritization?
Mr. Bennett. Not as far as I know. The telecom carriers in
China are state-owned enterprises.
Mr. Flores. Right.
Mr. Bennett. And they're pretty much able to----
Mr. Flores. How about Japan?
Mr. Bennett. Japan, I don't think it does.
Mr. Flores. They don't? And South Korea? Do they have a ban
on paid prioritization?
Mr. Bennett. No, definitely not. South Korea offers all
kinds of gradations of internet.
Mr. Flores. So we talked about discrimination against rural
communities. Let's assume this fact pattern for a minute. You
have got an ISP that has an internet pipe going into a rural
community. That rural pipe drives or carries the traffic for a
new 5G network that we have in that rural community, but it's a
limited-size pipe.
So you're going to have 5G traffic. You're going to have RS
traffic going over it. You're going to have FirstNet going over
it, hospitals, schools, and then on a Saturday night, 80
percent of the traffic is going to be coming through because of
video.
If you don't have paid prioritization, what happens to
everybody's traffic under that scenario?
Mr. Bennett. Well, if you don't prioritize, then what
happens is when network load increases and latency increases,
and it's sort of every app is affected to some degree, and the
more sensitive apps are affected more seriously.
Mr. Flores. OK.
Mr. Bennett. So I think one of the implications is that,
for rural users, is if you can't get consistently low latency
for Skype, then you're going to have to keep on paying for an
old-timey telephone connection because your Skype is just never
going to be reliable.
Mr. Flores. And Mr. Schroeder, what would that do to your
Aira users, if you're in that community without a paid--again,
there's no paid prioritization.
Mr. Schroeder. Yes. We do have users in the rural areas,
and there is often a struggle to ensure that we've got good
network access for those individuals. That is something that we
certainly look forward to, further network development.
Mr. Flores. And so, Mr. Woods talked a lot about
discrimination against different populations because of a paid
prioritization. It sounds to me like the opposite is true.
If you have a ban on paid prioritization, it would
discriminate against your population of sight-limited and also
veterans. Does that make sense?
Mr. Schroeder. We don't know----
Mr. Flores. Again, using the same example.
Mr. Schroeder. Congressman, we don't know whether that's
true or not. But we suspect--what we do know is that having
access to a reliable network is critical, and in this case we
are able to use a priority network for that purpose. So that is
helping.
Mr. Flores. OK. And so, but if you didn't have access to
that paid priority network, then you wouldn't be able to have
that service with the low latency?
Mr. Schroeder. Our service certainly suffered prior to that
access.
Mr. Flores. OK.
Mr. Bennett, in order to offset that--again, you have got
this community, it's got a new 5G network, it's got limited
last-mile capability--who pays to expand the capacity?
Mr. Bennett. In the absence of anyone else coming up with
the desire to do that, it's going to be the carrier.
Mr. Flores. OK. And so then----
Mr. Bennett. Who is going to pass the cost on to the
consumer.
Mr. Flores. Right. So essentially, if you don't have paid
prioritization, then everybody pays to offset the latency
issues that are introduced because of a ban on pay
prioritization. Is that correct?
Mr. Bennett. Absolutely, just as today the people who don't
use Netflix pay for the capacity upgrades that enable others to
use Netflix.
Mr. Flores. OK. So, again, the cost is being socialized for
the people that want to use lots of bandwidth across the entire
population, even those who don't use the bandwidth.
That doesn't sound fair to me. I mean, we have a population
that pays for priority TSA pre-check, pays for toll lanes, pays
to use UPS instead of the mail service, or pays for priority
mail.
It seems to me like folks ought to pay for their fair
share.
Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time. Thank
you.
Mrs. Blackburn. The gentleman yields back.
Mrs. Brooks, you're recognized 5 minutes.
Mrs. Brooks. Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would like to just clear up and make sure we are all on
the same page relative to FirstNet--FirstNet, obviously, being
the network that has been created most recently to ensure the
public safety has the ability to communicate and gets priority
in the case of emergencies and disasters and is now just
beginning to be built out across the country and so forth.
But there is a ban on paid prioritization involving
FirstNet, is there not? I am a little bit confused.
Mr. Bennett.
Mr. Bennett. There's not. FirstNet is a special-purpose
network that's separate from the regular--or is sort of a
supplement to the regular mobile network.
But the preemption of the--or the relocation of the old
Title II regulations that were enacted by Chairman Wheeler
means that there is no ban on paid prioritization for anyone.
Mrs. Brooks. OK. And so how is it that we can ensure that
FirstNet, for instance, will receive that priority in an
instance of a disaster?
Mr. Bennett. Well, FirstNet is designed to do that. So if
it doesn't do that, then it's failed to meet its primary goal,
which is quality, preemption, and prioritization.
But the thing that worries me about FirstNet is, because it
does so many things that fall outside the realm of what the
traditional net neutrality advocates have demanded, what's to
prevent one of them--Mr. Wood's organization or some similar
organization--from simply filing a suit against FirstNet for
violating net neutrality?
Mrs. Brooks. Mr. Wood, you brought this up a little bit.
Can you please comment on this? Because I do want to make sure
that we all are on the same page when it comes to the
importance in the preemption of FirstNet.
Can you please comment?
Mr. Wood. Certainly, Congresswoman.
I think my earlier answer was that, yes, emergency services
deserve priority. They could have had that under the rules that
have now been repealed.
Mr. Bennett is correct that they don't face any such rules
today because there are no rules in place at the moment, or at
least there won't be when the rule changes take effect here in
the next few weeks.
But, again, I think what we keep missing is the distinction
``prioritization'' and ``paid prioritization.`` And so, again,
the last thing I would want is for first responders to have to
pay to prioritize their traffic during times of emergency. They
were able to prioritize for any kind of public safety or
emergency use case under the old rules, and I think that's what
should continue now.
Mrs. Brooks. But that's not being contemplated right now,
is it?
Mr. Wood. I think what's being contemplated is FirstNet is
actually designed to be a prioritized network for first
responders, and that would not have violated the 2015 rules
that have now been repealed. It's not a violation of anything
now. It's nothing that we would fight against.
We have three lawyers, so we are not really in the business
of filing more lawsuits than we need to.
Mrs. Brooks. OK. So you have no plans on filing any
lawsuits?
Mr. Wood. Certainly not.
Mrs. Brooks. OK.
Mr. Bennett. Could I----
Mrs. Brooks. Yes, Mr. Bennett.
Mr. Bennett. Can I add something to that?
Mrs. Brooks. Yes.
Mr. Bennett. Mr. Wood says that paid prioritization is not
part of FirstNet. But first responders pay to be part of
FirstNet.
They pay to use--it's not a free service, right. So it's
partially paid for by fees that States and municipalities give
up to be part of that network. And so then, once they've paid
those fees, then they get all the prioritization they need.
Mrs. Brooks. So how will a ban on paid prioritization
implicate FirstNet, Mr. Bennett?
Mr. Bennett. I am not sure that it would for the use of the
primary channel. But first responders--FirstNet is designed
actually use bandwidth that's available over regular commercial
networks as well when, you know, when it needs to.
And so I think there could be scenarios in that secondary
usage of the other channels that could subject FirstNet,
certainly, to a challenge.
Mrs. Brooks. Very briefly, Mr. Rysavy, shifting gears a
minute, can you comment on how 5G will inherently prioritize
traffic to handle a wider range of applications than 4G?
Mr. Rysavy. Thank you for the question, Congresswoman.
5G is being designed with a very sophisticated quality-of-
service architecture with which traffic flows can be managed
not only for priority but also for latency, possibility of
packet loss, guaranteed bandwidth, and so forth. So you really
need to manage all of those aspects to be able to provide
services with exactly the type of performance that they need.
Mrs. Brooks. Thank you. My time is up. I yield back.
Mrs. Blackburn. Gentlelady yields back.
Mr. Doyle just told me that baseball players get priority.
[Laughter.]
Mrs. Blackburn. And so he favors priority.
Mr. Doyle. Good ones. Good ones that are on the committee.
Mrs. Blackburn. So you are--you're recognized.
Mr. Ruiz. Given that I am the only other Democratic Member
here and that I've had my share of splinters collected, sitting
on the bench, I appreciate that, Coach Doyle.
Thank you. As a physician, I think we have obligation to
make sure that we are using the internet and technology to help
improve the public's health.
The FCC's 2015 net neutrality protections actually came up
with a very targeted way to ensure specialized services like
telehealth and public safety technology are allowed to thrive.
But I am concerned that the current FCC has done the
opposite by abandoning any protections that prohibit big
corporations from paying for their services to be prioritized
over these telehealth-type services.
So, with that in mind, I would like to introduce a letter
for the record from the American Medical Informatics
Association that expresses these concerns.
Mrs. Blackburn. Without objection.
[The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.]
Mr. Ruiz. Thank you so much. So my first question is for
Mr. Wood. It's very simple: Is there anything in the FCC's most
recent net neutrality order that will ensure, guarantee
hospitals, community health clinics, and local police
departments won't just get pushed into slower lanes because
they can't afford to bid against the big megacorporations down
the road?
Mr. Wood. Thank you, Congressman.
Not to my knowledge. I know that the current order
basically took away all of the traffic management rules and
guidelines and left it to the ISPs. It has some transparency
obligations that they face, but nothing that would speak to
their ability to either charge for priority or not.
Mr. Ruiz. Yes. So there are no safeguards to guarantee that
these vital public health services are protected and not
marginalized for profit motive?
Mr. Wood. That's right. To my knowledge, there are no
safeguards and basically this FCC has washed its hand of the
business and said that they are not going to have any rules
whatsoever when it comes to what ISPs try to prioritize or not.
Mr. Ruiz. OK. And what would you do to ensure those
safeguards?
Mr. Wood. Well, we have supported the Congressional Review
Act resolution of this approval to restore the 2015 order. We
feel it's important to restore the entirety of the rules that
were lost but also the FCC's ability to investigate if
something like that were to occur.
So sometimes this is talked about in a competition
framework, and that matters. But we would certainly want to FCC
to have the ability to investigate if it were a certain kind of
telemedicine or health application being discriminated against,
even if that were not to favor another telemedicine application
but simply were a bad choice made by the cable or phone
company.
Mr. Ruiz. OK. And, as a lawyer that follows net neutrality
closely, can you explain what it means that the FCC's original
net neutrality protections treated telehealth as a specialized
service? What does that mean?
Mr. Wood. Well, it means that they were allowed to be
treated as specialized services. I would note that I think many
telehealth applications can and do run over the open internet.
So it's not the case that every health application, or
every medicine application, even, has to be treated as a
specialized service.
I don't know if the word has a lot of meaning for folks. I
sometimes think of it as dedicated capacity. And so, if you
have an application that does not fit well on the open
internet, it needs additional protections, then it could be
treated as a specialized service--again, usually paid for by
the person who has the arrangement with the ISP.
So not necessarily this additional kind of toll, where
they're paying twice, both for their own connectivity and for
priority in the last mile, but simply arranging their own kind
of delivery privately.
Mr. Ruiz. One of the biggest challenges that we have is in
rural America, where you don't have population centers that can
access the infrastructure for broadband and other things, even
for commercial use. These are exactly the locations where we
want to promote telehealth, because they need access to doctors
and health care services.
Do you think it's a valid concern that, without the strong
net neutrality protections, we might undermine innovation in
the medical space and elsewhere?
Mr. Wood. I do, Congressman.
I think that the genius of the internet has been that
application makers can come up with their ideas and not have to
pay an additional toll to bring them to market or to get them
through that last mile to the user.
And so, when you do have a small ISP--I have the same
concerns, not just that the small ISP might serve as a
bottleneck but, if they were really were at a bargaining
disadvantage with the biggest edge providers, then perhaps that
content would be prioritized rather than the small application
makers or innovators.
Mr. Ruiz. We are starting to see a lot of tech-medicine-
type opportunities for people in rural areas that haven't been
served for mental health services.
And so now you're seeing folks on their phones or their
pads, their computers being able to actually have counseling
for the first time and be connected with other addiction
services groups to provide social support networks to get the
care that they need.
And so I am just concerned that this is going to inhibit
that progress that is being made out there.
Thank you very much.
Mrs. Blackburn. The gentleman yields back.
Mr. Johnson, 5 minutes.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you,
gentlemen, for joining our panel today.
Mr. Schroeder, a lot of parties paying attention to this
hearing have pushed the idea that we don't need to worry about
whether an application like Aira could avoid a paid
prioritization ban in the future, since past net neutrality
attempts have always included an exception for specialized
services.
Setting aside the problem that past performance does not
predict future results, that is actually incorrect. The 2015
Open Internet Order specifically rejected the, quote,
``specialized services,'' unquote, carve out, providing instead
an exception for ``services that are not broadband internet
access service unless a service that is not broadband internet
access service is provided in a manner that undermines the
purpose of the open internet rules.''
Now, do you understand what that means? Because nobody else
understands what that means.
Mr. Schroeder. No, Congressman. The way you phrased it, I
can't untangle that thicket.
Mr. Johnson. Yes. Well, nobody else can either. So Mr.
Rysavy, your thoughts on this. Would that definition give you
any confidence that some of these services we are talking about
would meet the FCC's approval?
Mr. Rysavy. Congressman, thank you for asking.
No, not at all. The exception for specialized services is
ill defined and certainly does not foster innovation or any
confidence in moving forward with such applications.
Mr. Johnson. All right. Well, thank you.
You know, the devil is in the details. This is one we need
to make sure we get right, or a paid prioritization restriction
could do some real harm.
Mr. Wood, moving on to you, you seem to indicate in your
testimony that broadband was considered a Title II service
until the Bush FCC tinkered with its classifications.
What you didn't mention, though, was that the Obama FCC
agreed with that classification of broadband as an information
service and left it there in its first attempt at net
neutrality rules in 2010, and even the 2015 Open Internet Order
acknowledged the long track record here.
It spelled out all the history and tied the determination
that broadband was an information service all the way back to
the computer inquiries that the FCC had decided over 50 years
ago.
The Commission was very specific that it was changing its
mind and disavowing all the previous precedent to reclassify
broadband into a Title II telecommunication service.
So do you disagree with the determination by Chairman
Wheeler that, before 2015, broadband had always been an
information service?
Mr. Wood. I don't know that he said it precisely that way,
but I do disagree with that phrasing.
Before 2015, you mentioned the first Obama administration
attempted at neutrality rules. Like the rules that were adopted
at the tail end of the Bush administration, those were struck
down in court. So there's a reason that we went back to the
drawing board and talked about it again.
The dispute here is not so much whether broadband was an
information service but whether internet access was, and there
are two parts of that. There's the connection that gets you
online. Then there's the service or the content you interact
with once you're there.
So there has been some historical dispute about whether
something like AOL, for example, was an information service. I
would say that it was. It was allowing you to browse the
internet, but only once you got to that site using your phone
connection.
And what we say is that from, really, before 2002 all
internet access, that physical connection was Title II. The FCC
started to change that and said that access over a cable line
could be considered an information service, and that's when the
attempts to prevent discrimination on those lines started to
fall down in court. So that's why the FCC returned to what we
see as the rightful legal definition.
Mr. Johnson. Got you. OK.
Mr. Bennett, most of us subscribe to mass-market retail
broadband. This means that, rather than each of us having a
dedicated pipe to just our home, we are sharing bandwidth with
all of our neighbors who also subscribe to that same service.
So, if everyone on my street is streaming videos in the
evening to broadband speeds, I am getting what might be slower
than I would experience at another time when not as many users
are on the connection.
So here's my question to you: What happens if there's an
emergency that I need to call 9-1-1 on my voice over IP-enabled
phone? Since that call goes over my broadband connection at
some point, will it also be caught up in that video congestion?
Will my 9-1-1 call be degraded so someone can watch a cat
video?
Mr. Bennett. The short answer is yes.
Mr. Johnson. OK. That's about all I can ask for.
Madam Chair, I yield back.
Mrs. Blackburn. The gentleman yields back.
Mrs. Walters, 5 minutes.
Mrs. Walters. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you,
witnesses, for being here.
When talking to my constituents back home about tech
issues, one of the questions I've been asked is how
prioritization could impact them.
I know some of my colleagues have covered a couple of these
issues, but I would like to ask a few questions that some of my
constituents have been asking me.
One thing that comes up is the issue of degradation and
internet traffic management. Some people have expressed
concerns that prioritizing certain traffic over other degrades
the traffic that is not prioritized.
Mr. Bennett, in your testimony you mentioned the
Differentiated Treatment of Internet Traffic report, which,
quote, ``demonstrates that traffic differentiation is not a
zero sum game.''
Could you explain what that means for the average internet
consumer?
Mr. Bennett. Yes, I can.
I was a member of the committee that wrote that report. The
point is that, because applications are not all created equal,
a sort of a theoretical or a literal degradation of an
individual piece of information by a millionth of a second or
so may qualify in a legal sense as a degradation.
It's not a degradation that the consumer will perceive. And
so, given that we are placing so much importance on polling
and--you know, which is sort of a question of measuring
perception--the question is whether there's a perceptible
degradation, and in that sense prioritization is certainly
provably empirically without a doubt unquestionably not a zero
sum game.
Mrs. Walters. OK. Thank you.
And Mr. Rysavy, in your testimony you talked about network
slicing and its relationship to quality-of-service management.
Can you explain the concept of network slicing in layman's
terms and how it affects the average consumer?
Mr. Rysavy. Thank you, Congresswoman, for the question.
Network slicing is an architectural aspect of 5G.
Basically, it's a way that the network will present different
faces for different usages.
So, in theory, an operator could develop a slice for
autonomous vehicles, another slice for a factory automation,
and so forth, and each of these will require very specific
quality-of-service requirements among which traffic
prioritization is essential.
What it translates to the user is that, with network
slicing, they will see a wide range of new, innovative services
coming to market.
Mrs. Walters. Thank you.
And throughout this hearing, there's been a discussion
about the different forms of prioritization, and I think we can
all agree that there are instances where certain traffic has to
be prioritized over others, like the example that we've been
hearing a lot lately is prioritizing 9-1-1 call over a cat
video.
Mr. Bennett, can you talk about types of bad
prioritization, including types we should actively prevent?
Mr. Bennett. You know, I think any sort of negative
prioritization that's intended to impair the performance of a
competitive product to the carrier is something that should be
looked at with suspicion. But I think it's sort of covered
under general antitrust law.
I am not a lawyer like Mr. Wood is, so I can't really
justify that. But it's my sense, the way it's been explained to
me, that the violations that we are concerned about are
essentially already prohibited under sort of the general laws
of regulating business in the U.S.
Mrs. Walters. Mr. Wood, would you want to add anything to
that?
Mr. Wood. I could. I think the antitrust could be a remedy
for some competitors, say, if Comcast decided to block Netflix.
I don't think it would be a very useful remedy in all
instances, especially if there were smaller video providers who
were suffering from that kind of blockage or deprioritization,
and I think all we have to do is look at cable TV, where you
don't have some kind of common carrier mantra and framework.
You know, cable TV is not illegal under the antitrust
standards. Cable providers do pick and choose which content to
show you.
The question is, should we have no safeguards whatsoever
and make the internet more like cable TV or should we have the
same kind of two-way open transmission network we've had that
lets people go to any site of their choosing.
Mrs. Walters. And what should Congress consider doing to
prevent these types of prioritization activities from
occurring? And Mr. Bennett and then Mr. Wood, if you'd like to
join in.
Mr. Bennett. I would rather that Congress adopt a generally
permissive attitude. There's been so much demonization and so
much sort of emotional rhetoric and spin and framing in this
discussion that I think we've just sort of--we've gone way
overboard on the side of caution.
So let's let a few things happen. Let's allow some
experiments like Aira to take place and examine the marketplace
and then, if something is going on, then step in and correct,
but preemptively allow people to innovate.
Mrs. Walters. My time is up.
Mrs. Blackburn. The gentlelady yields back.
Mr. Costello for 5 minutes.
Mr. Costello. Thank you.
Mr. Rysavy, I enjoyed reading your testimony----
Mr. Rysavy. Thank you.
Mr. Costello [continuing]. And found it very helpful. I
want to cite something and ask you this question. Mission
critical use-case-model-type analysis that you provided, you
state, ``This category of 5G application will depend on the
ability to deploy traffic prioritization.''
Can you just briefly explain why prioritization will be
necessary for 5G? Is it necessary, and if so, why?
Mr. Rysavy. Thank you for the question, Congressman.
Yes, prioritization is an absolutely essential aspect of 5G
in enabling new use cases. The whole motivation for investing
hundreds of billions of dollars in 5G networks is to expand
what can be done with wireless technologies, and being able to
support mission critical applications is going to be a great
expansion of capabilities compared to 4G.
Mr. Costello. And along that line, and I think the
terminology here--I think everybody supports net neutrality,
broadly speaking--certain types of paid prioritization, I
think, obviously do fall under FTC and are anticompetitive.
When you speak about prioritization here, what you're
speaking about is organizing slices based on the type of data
and what it's used for. Is that correct?
Mr. Rysavy. That is correct.
Mr. Costello. Is there a better way for you to--would you
embellish on that, if need be, or was that----
Mr. Rysavy. No, the whole point is to recognize that
different types of applications have different requirements.
Some may need very high bandwidth but can drop a lot of packets
because it won't impact the user experience. Others might be
very low bandwidth, but the reliability of information carried
might be absolutely crucial.
Mr. Costello. You go on to say, ``But unprioritized and
competing with other traffic, the latency ... can be 10 times
higher, for example,'' and then you go on. And what you're
saying there, I believe, is that, if we don't have
prioritization, that you will end up across the board
generalized with slower data getting from point A to point B.
Is that correct?
Mr. Rysavy. Yes. The point I am making is that, if you have
to treat every packet equally, that you will end up degrading
the average quality of experience across the base of
applications.
Essentially, prioritization is an extremely powerful tool
for network management, and to ban it really undermines the
value of these networks, moving into the future.
Mr. Costello. Mr. Wood, what's your response to that?
Mr. Wood. I think it's just where we began, Congressman:
that we haven't called for a ban on prioritization done in a
neutral fashion to make sure that applications work. We've
called for a ban and the rules had a ban on paid
prioritization, meaning that the edge provider, the app maker,
whomever we want to think----
Mr. Costello. The one you have the content associated with
it. But don't you agree that the FTC already has jurisdiction
over that and is able to enforce?
Mr. Wood. Well, the FTC might have jurisdiction, or DOJ
might if we could make it come to----
Mr. Costello. Well, they do or they don't, don't they?
Mr. Wood. Well, they have jurisdiction over certain kinds
of anticompetitive conduct. They don't have jurisdiction if my
own home connection is suffering because I can't reach the
content that I want, and I am focused on the internet user, not
just this battle between Comcast and Netflix or any other two
large providers.
Mr. Costello. Isn't in the interest of the company to make
sure that the user does have access?
Mr. Wood. Well, I think what we are talking about today,
though, shows that there are use cases for prioritization. So
they have general interest in making sure that content is
available, but that they might then pick and choose which
content is available at which terms for people who pay more.
Mr. Costello. I had another question. This is tangential, I
apologize. But the fake comments--what is your--I mean, what is
a fake comment?
Mr. Wood. Well, I think there are different kinds one could
describe as less valuable. We certainly think the petition----
Mr. Costello. But isn't the FCC able to sift through that
and determine what's valuable and what isn't?
Mr. Wood. Well, I think they said they are not going to
decide what is fake and what isn't. So, to me, something that
is obviously fake or fraudulent is somebody using----
Mr. Costello. But what's fake?
Mr. Wood. Somebody using somebody's else identification and
name and address to put a comment in.
Mr. Costello. But the content, isn't it about the content
and not who says it?
Mr. Wood. Well, I do think people have a right to not have
things said in their name. So, if somebody put a comment in for
you supporting Title II, you might care.
Mr. Costello. People say that I--fair point. But
ultimately, though, the FCC would be looking at the content of
the comment, not who said it. Wouldn't that be accurate?
Mr. Wood. I would hope they would look at the content, but
I think it matters who said it too because people have a right
to speak in their own name and not have others speak for them
or pretend to speak for them.
Mr. Costello. But the FCC wouldn't decide something one way
or the other just because a specific person said it or didn't
say it. Wouldn't that be correct?
Mr. Wood. That's right, and I think that they still have an
obligation to make sure their record isn't tainted by people
basically engaging in identity theft in order to make comments
that are not actually their own.
Mr. Costello. Sometimes we probably wish people wouldn't
taint our comments too.
OK. Thank you. I yield back.
Mrs. Blackburn. The gentleman yields back.
Seeing that there are no further Members----
Mr. Doyle. Madam Chair?
Mrs. Blackburn. Yes, sir.
Mr. Doyle. Can I ask unanimous consent, in addition to the
letters from pediatricians, telehealth experts, small
businesses, and others supporting a ban of paid prioritization,
I have one additional letter from the Consumers Union that I
would like to introduce onto the record.
Mrs. Blackburn. Without objection.
[The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.]
Mr. Doyle. Thank you.
Mrs. Blackburn. Yes. You all have been gracious with your
time and with getting your testimony in.
Before we conclude, I do want to submit for the record, and
ask unanimous consent to do so, tweets of CloudFlare CEO
Matthew Prince; a report by Richard Bennett, ``Designed for
Change''; a report by BITAG; Daniel Lyons' article; your
comments, Mr. Rysavy; a report by Mr. Rysavy, ``How Wireless is
Different''; and an article by George Ford.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing,
except for the Bennett, BITAG, and Rysavy reports and Mr. Rysavy's
comments, which have been retained in committee files and also are
available at https://docs.house.gov/Committee/Calendar/
ByEvent.aspx?EventID=108168.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
[The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.]
Mrs. Blackburn. I will remind our Members that, pursuant to
committee rules, they have 10 days to submit questions in
writing to you, and you all will have 10 days in which to
respond.
There being no further business to come before the
committee, we are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:26 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Material submitted for inclusion in the record follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
[all]