Yesterday was Net Neutrality day on Capitol Hill, with a pair of hearings that roughly illustrate where things stand on this rather contentious issue. Sen. Ted Steven’s Senate Commerce Committee held the second of two scheduled hearings on his bill (S. 2686), again featuring a panel of industry experts, who were fairly divided on their outlook as to what approach works best on Net Neutrality. One notable sub text to come out of this hearing was the even tone in dialogue among witnesses and members, with a good amount of weighing the various attributes among the recommended approaches, and what this might mean for various segments of the industries involved.

There are two points to be made here: 1) credit goes to Sen. Ted Stevens and his fellow committee members for holding a lively but civilized discussion on a debate issue that had taken some rather disturbing tones of late; and 2) Net Neutrality is more than about networks – it affects a number of related, interlinked, industry segments that are in constant flux, and also happen to be very important to the nation’s economy, making this particular issue extraordinarily complicated, and the consequences for choosing the wrong approach, profound.

While unbundling had the potential for causing tremendous headaches, (and had the curbside appeal of a property barely visible but for the biohazard signs), it affected a much smaller slice of the industry, namely, the wireline incumbent and competitive carriers, with the network and applications vendors clumped somewhere in between, depending on whether the subject was narrowband or broadband. It was thus much easier to figure out where everyone stood. Net Neutrality has not only a bigger footprint, affecting all broadband networks, from applications and services providers to content, and thus has greater “interested party” resonance and the potential for generating more consumer attention.  

The other hearing on Net Neutrality featured a markup of Judiciary Committee Chairman Sensenbrenner’s HR 5417, which passed out of committee but by a partisan vote of 20-13, with 13 Republicans, or a majority of the majority, voting against the bill. The bill would impose broad, common carrier type regulations on broadband network providers; pick your broadband network flavor. As the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Barton Rush franchise bill moves toward the House floor, the interplay between the two bills coming from two powerful committees will be interesting to watch – but what comes out of the House will also have to sync up with Sen. Stevens’ bill from the Senate.

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The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing last week on Alaska Senator Ted Steven’s telecom reform bill, S. 2686, the “Communications, Consumers' Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006,” taking the temperature of industry experts on what’s included in the bill, and what’s not.

The Senate approach is fairly broad – in that way similar to earlier, bi-partisan, and comprehensive legislative approaches in the House – prior to coalescing around video franchise reform, creating a national, rather than local model, in the Barton-Rush bill that passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee several weeks ago.

There are a number of things to keep in mind about the prospects of telecom reform this year, which may generally be grouped under the headings of time and focus. House Energy and Commerce members had time to consider a broader reform bill, and after extensive internal debate, zero in on what may fairly be considered to be the true legislative driver before this Congress – the telco video franchise issue.

I thought it was high time for a serious, scholarly review of the so-called “Net Neutrality” debate, so I’ve decided to use, as a reference for this discussion, the wonderful Sci Fi flicks of the 50s that explored the terrors that just might exist on the frontiers of technology. Second, lest anyone complain about any lighthearted treatment of developments that contributed to that period marked by very real concern by citizens around the world, let me point out that I am not mocking anything, just writing a blog.

Wow, that was fun. An earlier entry in  this blog noted a wry comment made at markup by a member on the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Telecom Subcommittee, that we weren’t proposing “changing the earth’s axis” by this debate over Net Neutrality, though any reasonable visitor from another planet who had the misfortune of touching earth in the vicinity of the Capitol might very well think otherwise, and promptly leave town, by any means possible, e.g., walking, crawling, leaving a trail of slime, etc.

Remember, there are a number of other debates going on around town also, say, like minor ones over immigration and whatnot, and also that, as a people, we’ve probably become somewhat inured to our level of political debate, or should I say, the practice of politics, which has turned into a strictly “no prisoners” affair, no matter the issue at hand.

So let’s see, I’ve touched upon using hysteria to explore the potential tomorrows made possible by technology today, the ruthless, win-at-all-costs nature of politics as we have to come to know it, how some really disappointed and unnerved aliens (I just got the unintentional pun) might be decamping the Capitol lawn (sans spaceship, if need be), and so I think I’m ready for that aforementioned serious, scholarly discussion of Net Neutrality, just like I promised.

The only problem is that I am tired of thinking about it. Maybe it’s the tactics used in the debate, that’s right, the hysteria, that in turn has generated a level of clamor on a telecom issue that far outstrips what normally stands for clamor in these debates. Right now, I’m waiting for the termite/pest control industry to weigh in with on how misguided it would be for Congress to venture one step further in either direction with rules that (one would think) only apply to wireline broadband video.

Proponents of proscriptive rules preserving Net Neutrality have demonstrated great concern how the telcos might  dominate a rapidly changing business that they’re not even in yet, so these people must really be far sighted, or have a different game plan altogether. Since I think we’re talking about the video delivery business, brought to you over high speed wireline broadband, I’m not quite sure how the termite industry is affected, but I hear they are mighty ticked off about things, and the financial industry is suddenly all atwitter about the train they almost missed leaving the station.

If there is any irony here, that the financial industry is suddenly concerned about additional fees that the telcos might charge them for using their broadband networks, try this for size: take your ATM card to another (non-affiliated) bank, take out some cash, but first, before you do, try checking your balance, at least once, but if you really want to throw caution to the winds, check your balance twice in the same trip to the ATM.  

Later, have a look at your bank statement to see how badly you get screwed to the wall for daring to inquire how much money you have in their bank that you’re letting them use, or for having the nerve to ask them for the temporary use of your/their money, but don’t you dare go over or under any preset limit, the terms governing which one-sided arrangement you already have in your possession, if you happened to be looking for a losing argument to flog.

At the end of the day, this is such a successful business model that I halfway imagine the next generation broadband companies might copy it, from whole cloth, since, at the end of the day,  most consumers don’t bother to complain, and boy do those little charges really add up.

Instead, what you hear about is how much the telcos’ business plans are going harm consumers, which may in turn say something about the wisdom of shooting from the hip and pushing the envelope at the same time, which envisions one really mean messenger, from one possible future, something that’s worth fighting against.