I had to laugh at the one comment:
----------------------------
Richard Bennett • an hour ago
This is the most confused piece I've yet seen on Title II. I suspect the author
isn't clear on the meanings of net neutrality and Title II, and is also pretty
clueless about content bundling and the regulations currently in place on
Internet interconnection. It's good to have an editor.
----------------------------
Can certainly agree with that. But one point he gets right, I think, is how
repeal of a neutrality mandate re-creates the MVPD experience, the gateway role
of previous MVPDs, on the Internet. Hardly a benefit for consumers, unless he
thinks that the Internet should be nothing more than another
entertainment-oriented walled garden!
END OF THREAD.
Bert
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http://www.multichannel.com/blog/mcn-guest-blog/title-ii-internet-s-commercial-firewall/412789
Title II: The Internet’s Commercial Firewall
Making the business case for network neutrality
5/12/2017 5:00 AM
Author: Randy Cooke, SpotXchange
In 2015, Tom Wheeler’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposed that
the Title II provision of the 1934 Communications Act applied to the internet.
In short, the FCC considered the internet a public monopoly and, by extension,
should be subject to the 80-year-old policies designed to regulate the
telephone monopoly, Ma Bell.
Colloquially, we refer to this invocation of Title II as “net neutrality,” the
FCC’s official position since 2015.
The rationale behind this policy is rather elegant in its simplicity: that
internet service providers shouldn’t be permitted to discriminate against
content owners by leveraging their ability to speed up or slow down consumer
internet speeds.
The U.S. is now more than two decades removed from its last substantive
overhaul of policies governing the nation’s communications infrastructure and
resources. The 1996 Telecommunications Act, signed into law by President Bill
Clinton, paved the way for the access, innovation and spectrum optimization
necessary to bring us to the modern user-value economy.
But few lawmakers in 1996 could have grasped the enormity of a 2017 internet.
An internet capable of serving billions of latent-free 4K UHD streams
wirelessly to VR goggles on our faces. An internet, in fact, whose spectrum is
today almost entirely consumed by video.
And lawmakers most certainly couldn’t have envisioned such scale in 1934, which
is why this lack of clarity serves in tentative support of Title II as a modern
standard of regulation.
Enter Ajit Pai, the new Republican sheriff at the FCC. If you’ve ever wondered
what modernized laissez-faire looks like, you’re about to see it.
Pai has not minced words when it comes to reversing net neutrality in pursuit
of an “open and free” internet. You need look no further than the
Netflix-Comcast relationship to understand what an “open and free” internet
will look like.
This could substantially augment the business of network carriage, positioning
ISPs as industry toll booths across rapidly expanding lanes of traffic.
Audiences that once “tuned” to TV programming in a “one-to-any” broadcast feed
are finding their ways into the “one-to-device” economy of unicast streaming
through connected TVs and linear streaming apps.
Simply put, a metered internet provides content distributors — specifically,
content distributors that own the “last mile” of spectrum to the consumer —
with leverage against the carriage fees the programmer currently collects from
the distributor. This is an enormous chunk of most people’s $200-plus monthly
cable bill.
In an “open and free” internet, the distributor can theoretically charge the
programmer for dedicated bandwidth to ensure a satisfactory streaming
experience, which in turn makes content cost-neutral to the distributor. That
is, of course, if the distributor happens to also be the ISP.
If we look to the pre-network-neutrality precedent set by that Netflix and
Comcast deal, where Netflix was able to structure a better consumer streaming
experience across the Comcast footprint, the model suggests that an environment
capable of supporting true a la carte may be knocking on the door.
A profound shift in the balance of power between content and distribution will
be the necessary consequence of eliminating Title II’s governance of the
internet. For better or worse, three sectors of the media landscape will be
affected.
First, this is a boon to traditional cable operators who also serve as most
people’s ISP, via coax, fiber or wireless spectrum—the incumbent Multichannel
Video Programming Distributors (MVPDs). They are content gateways through which
consumers’ access, cost and quality of content engagement will be determined by
the content originator’s metered internet terms, payable to the ISP/MVPD.
Such cost-neutralization of carriage for the traditional MVPD represents
enormous advantages over virtual MVPDs, an industry effectively created by the
FCC in 2014 when it reclassified the definition of MVPD to exclude any physical
distribution infrastructure.
While virtual MVPDs may offer content access rivaling the incumbent MVPDs, they
too would be subject to the costs of a metered internet, again, payable to the
ISPs. No doubt, this would be a margin-crusher that would favor the incumbent
MVPDs in a content price war. The FCC has yet to comment on how exactly this
promotes competition.
Finally, there are the programmers whose very existence depends on bundled
carriage revenues. Without the ability to offset the neutralization of carriage
revenue with robust monetization of audience, the elimination of net neutrality
may very well thin the herd of linear programmers. Who’s got time for bad TV
anymore?
In the end, Ajit Pai’s vision for an open and free internet will likely result
in outcomes marginally favorable to consumers. Content distribution is
democratizing at an unbelievable rate, while audiences continue to balkanize
across platforms and devices. So while consumers will soon be able to price
shop providers in earnest, diversity in programming itself may be the first
casualty of a new, open and free internet.
Randy Cooke is vice president of programmatic TV at video ad inventory
marketplace SpotXchange.
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