[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 170 (Tuesday, November 8, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7167-S7169]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NET NEUTRALITY
Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I rise in opposition to S.J. Res. 6.
This resolution would basically roll back the FCC's compromise over
what we have all been debating: net neutrality. This is a subject area
I have more than a passing interest in. It is a subject I had the good
fortune to be involved in during the practice of my business for over
20 years before I got involved full time in politics and public
service.
I, and I know the Presiding Officer and probably all of us in this
body, recognize that the power of telecommunications and the power of
the Internet to transform people's lives has been remarkable. Demand
for Internet use is growing dramatically. Today, nearly 2 billion
people use the Internet. By 2015--and that is a mere 4 years from now--
that number is expected to reach 2.7 billion.
That is pretty significant: 2.7 billion people using the Internet out
of a total worldwide population of 7 billion folks. We are rapidly
hitting the point where nearly half the world will use the Internet in
one form or another to communicate, to effect commerce, to socially
interact. This is a tool. Making sure this tool, this network, this
technology, this transformative field truly remains open, free, and
available to all and is not unduly hindered by government regulation is
something we all aspire to. Yet even as we see this tremendous growth
in the Internet, we see constraints--constraints put on by spectrum
resources and access to high-speed broadband. Mobile app providers seem
to be multiplying exponentially day by day. There are already over
600,000 applications or ``apps'' for the iPhone. Android--a more recent
entrant into the market--now has over 500,000 ``apps.''
One of the most incredible things is that the United States lays
claim to inventing the Internet which was developed by government
research linking a whole series of computer networks back in the late
1980s and into the early 1990s. While the United States has been at the
forefront of Internet development, unfortunately due to broadband
constraints and spectrum constraints, the United States, which used to
be a leader, is no longer in that leadership role. For example, homes
in South Korea have greater access to faster, more advanced wireless
networks and broadband than we do.
So the question in the resolution we are debating is: How do we make
sure we continue to grow access to broadband? How do we make sure the
Internet, with all its wonderful new applications, is available in the
most open and technology-neutral way?
The FCC has wrestled with this issue for some time, and the FCC is
the appropriate place to be wrestling with this issue. Last December,
the FCC came out with an order--an order that reached some level of
compromise between a series of very strong competing interests. By no
means do I believe the FCC December 2010 order is perfect. But it does
represent a dramatic step forward in that a majority of the players,
candidly, in the industry have reached some accommodation.
I do not believe this order in itself is a sufficient answer. I do
believe we in Congress are going to need, at some point, to come back
and review the Telecommunications Act of 1996. While that offered great
promise--and I was someone who was still in the private sector at that
moment in time, someone who thought we were going to see true
interconnection opportunities for truly local competitive access in
terms of telephone services--that did not come to pass. As a matter of
fact, I have a number of companies that went down the tubes that I
invested in that assumed that 1996 Act would open those kinds of
activities. It did not come to pass.
[[Page S7168]]
But having Congress revisit the 1996 Telecommunications Act is not
what is being debated today. What is being debated is whether we go
ahead and allow the FCC's compromise proposition to move forward or
whether we introduce further politics into this issue when we ought not
let politics stand in the way of technology and innovation moving
forward.
I know some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who feel
otherwise. They think the FCC's compromise order puts too much
government regulation on innovation. I must respectfully disagree. If
we were talking about too much government regulation of innovation, I
would be strongly standing with those colleagues saying that is not
what we ought to be doing.
What we are doing, as we debate this so-called net neutrality issue,
is talking about the rights and responsibilities of network owners and
operators to manage the Internet and, quite honestly, to allow them to
run successful businesses in a free and open way.
We are also talking about the rights of consumers to have access to
lawful content on the Internet without any prejudice. Without having
that network provider choose one content provider over another in terms
of who gets first dibs, first access to their network.
This issue has been debated on and off not just this year but for a
number of years. In many ways, the current history on this issue goes
back to 2005, when both the Federal Communications Commission and the
Supreme Court determined separately that broadband services should be
reclassified as information services under the 1996 Telecommunications
Act instead of as telecommunications services.
For those who do not live within the rather esoteric world of telecom
regulations, what does this mean in plain English? Information services
have always had a lighter touch of regulation than have
telecommunications services.
Think about the original regulation of telecommunications services
going back almost to the 1934 act, when we had, in effect, one
telecommunications provider. It was Ma Bell. We could pick our phone of
any type, as long as it was black, and everybody paid the same access
fee. When we had that kind of monopolistic situation telecommunications
had to be regulated in a more appropriate way to make sure the
consumers were protected.
As we saw the evolution of telecom services and the breakup of Ma
Bell and a move to multiple providers, telecom services still have
required a slightly heavier hand of regulation than for information
services.
Back in 2005, the Supreme Court and the FCC said that because we have
this brand new area of broadband--an area that in 2005 we did not fully
realize the potential of, frankly, even in 2011, I am not sure we fully
realize the potential--we are going to view this as information
services and, consequently, have less regulation. That should be viewed
as a good sign.
Contrary to what some in this debate say, there has never been a time
when the management of the Internet or the telecommunications
networks--which make up, in effect, the backbone of our Internet
system--has not been regulated. Again, as I mentioned earlier,
networks--whether they are passing voice, data, now video or others--
all have had some form of regulation going back to the
Telecommunications Act of 1934.
The question we are asked here today is: What kind of rules do we
want to have as a society to make sure everyone can have free and
unfettered access to the Internet and to lawful content in a way that
is not biased or prejudiced by the telecommunications provider in the
background?
To me, that means Internet service providers have the right to manage
the networks as best they can. That means network providers have to
have the ability to manage some level of traffic so they can generate
enough revenues to continue to build out their networks, particularly
so rural communities can have access to these services.
I know the Acting President pro tempore knows of parts of northern
New Hampshire where there are still areas that do not have full high-
speed broadband Internet access. I know in my State of Virginia there
are parts of Southside and southwest that do not have access to full
high-speed broadband connections.
While broadband connectivity does not guarantee economic success, it
is a prerequisite for any community in the 21st century if they are
even going to get looked at as a possible location for new jobs. So we
have to make sure all communities get access to broadband. That means
we have to allow the network providers at least enough of a rate of
return to give them the incentive to build out their networks.
But it also means that while they have to be able to manage their
networks, these Internet service providers, cannot discriminate against
content providers' access to networks. It does not mean a network
provider ought to be able to say: I like this content more than that
type of content, particularly if the network provider happens to own
that content and somehow moves it to the front of the line. That goes
against the grain of everything that has been about providing
telecommunications in this country since the 1934 Act.
If this was a simple matter, the industry, the FCC, and others would
not have been wrestling with it as dramatically as they have over the
last 5 or 6 years. The fact is, network management is increasingly
complicated. So complicated that sometimes it is hard to tell exactly
what is going on behind the scenes.
As a former telecommunications executive and somebody who spent 20
years being involved in helping to try to build out at least part of
the wireless network in this country--but as somebody who also is at
this point falling behind on all the current technological
innovations--I would like to comment I was very current circa 1999,
which puts me a bit behind in 2011. While behind, I do recognize and
understand that network management in 2011 is extraordinarily
challenging.
New technologies that allow for prioritization of network traffic,
deep packet inspection, and the increasing use of metered services and
usage-based pricing--all these factors, combined with an effort to make
sure we are technology neutral in how we get this high-speed broadband
information--whether it is wired, wireless, satellites or otherwise.
This all makes these issues extraordinarily difficult for policymakers
to wrestle with.
It was in that vein that the FCC conducted a 2-year process to
address concerns about maintaining competitively neutral access to the
Internet. So in December of 2010, the FCC adopted an Open Internet
Order which is expected to be implemented on November 20th of this
year, 2011. As I said at the outset, the order they put forward is not
perfect. There are many in the industry who have a partial bone to pick
with various technical components. But the fact is I give Chairman
Genachowski great credit for managing to thread the needle in way that
while no one is totally happy, no one is totally unhappy. The issue of
net neutrality has been dealt with by the order and we can move on to
the next step of the debate. That is, we can turn to making sure we
actually complete the buildout of broadband networks, particularly to
the rural communities around America.
What does the FCC order do? It basically sets three basic rules for
how network owners, ISPs, must handle Internet traffic.
First, it offers greater transparency about fixed and mobile network
management practices to both consumers and content providers. This is
terribly important. Without that transparency, without that knowledge,
to see what we are getting as a consumer--or if you are a content
provider, making sure your traffic is not being bumped out of line by
some large network operator--is terribly important.
Second, it prevents fixed and mobile network providers from blocking
traffic generated by competitors to varying degrees. What does this
mean? It means if you are a network manager, if you are a network
provider--and many network providers are now starting to also own
content as well--you have to make sure that competitors are treated
fairly. If you are a competitor in terms of being a content provider,
you want to be sure the network you may be putting your traffic on that
has its own set of content is not allowing its network-owned content to
get priority, to get an unfair advantage.
[[Page S7169]]
If the networks are going to be open and accessible, neutral networks
that we have all come to expect from our telecommunications networks in
the past, we have to make sure there is no bias.
The second part of the FCC order tries to make sure these fixed and
mobile network providers aren't able to block traffic and give their
own content priority.
Third, it prohibits fixed broadband providers from unreasonable,
discriminatory practices. Again, this is about content, but it also
tries to get at that issue of how do we deal with those folks who have
huge amounts of content that can clog the network. We have to make sure
that we have open access, but we cannot have people overwhelm the
network with their particular content without the ability to price that
into the network provider's basic service offerings.
I know many of my colleagues' eyes are starting to glaze. I even see
some of the pages' eyes are starting to glaze as we dive into some of
the intricacies of telecommunications practices. But at the end of the
day, what the FCC did in 2010 will be implemented later this month--
unless the Senate rejects it and throws all the work out the window and
says let's go back to square one. I think would actually do great harm
to the progress made and provide even greater uncertainty to one of the
fastest growing areas of our economy, telecommunications and broadband.
If we reject this S.J. Res. 6, which I hope we will, and allow this
compromise that the FCC worked out to move forward, I believe it will
allow the kind of broadband growth, the kind of Internet growth we have
all come to expect. And it will help create new jobs in this country.
A couple final points. The wireless issues are a particularly
challenging policy area still to be addressed. Wireless is a newer
technology. The FCC decided in the Order to adopt a lighter hand of
regulation rather than the more strict, full telecommunications
regulation of the 1996 Act. This is because of the tremendous growth in
the nascent area of mobile services. As of December 2010, 26 percent of
U.S. households were wireless only, compared to about 8 percent of the
households 5 years ago. The point here is a dramatic one. I think about
my kids who, as they start to move into their own homes or even into
college, don't even have a phone in their apartment at college. They
rely entirely on wireless. We have to make sure we can continue to
build out these wireless networks in the most robust way possible. I
think the FCC basically got it right by not putting any more heavy-
handed regulation on wireless.
In closing, the real issue is how do we ensure that consumers and
content providers are treated fairly. The Internet was designed as an
open medium, where every service and Web site had an opportunity to
gain a following and to be successful. This philosophy allows bloggers
to compete with mainstream media and entrepreneurs across all sectors
to compete globally. Small and medium businesses that rely heavily on
Web technologies grow and export two times as much as businesses that
don't, according to McKinsey.
Some have argued that neither the Congress nor the FCC should do
anything in this area because there isn't a widespread problem
currently. It is important to remember that the reason the Internet has
been so successful has been the fact that no one has been able to
control it--no network provider alone, no content provider alone. I
hope that never changes.
I do believe the FCC Order should be allowed to be implemented. It
helps set minimum rules of the road that will allow Internet growth,
broadband growth, mobile growth, all areas where the United States can
regain the lead and continue to create jobs and advance prosperity.
With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Tester). The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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