NEWS: Michael Robertson on VoIP wars and Net Neutrality

They get sued in court for blocking sites.

On Fri, 02 Feb 2007 23:20:00 GMT, decaturtxcowboy wrote in :

Under what law (exact statute you have in mind)?

The same one the FCC has in mind when they fine the ISPs.

driven out of the market."*

Which one /exactly/? Definite its applicable to this scenario? And it applies how exactly, in Europe?

driven out of the market."*

It doesn't. The FCC only overseas the United States and possessions.

driven out of the market."*

No dateline here, but you could use Goggle for some key words.

[quote] The FCC has spanked an ISP for blocking VOIP calls so that the ISP?s subscribers were SOL. Addressing the SNAFU, the FCC indicated that an ISP blocking its users from accessing VOIP services is FUBAR. (How?s that for MAU? [Maximum Acronym Usage])

Seriously, the decision this week by the FCC involving North Carolina ISP Madison River Communication, and their blocking of VOIP services to their users, lead to a nolo contendre plea by Madison River, along with a $15,000 file. Nolo contendre, which essentially means ?no contest?, is considered to be a plea of neither ?guilty? or ?not guilty?, and in one of Aunty?s favourite definitions, is defined as meaning ?I didn?t do it, and I?ll never do it again.?

Madison River, which operates four telephone companies servicing rural areas of Georgia, Alabama, Illinois, and North Carolina, had been blocking the port typically used by VOIP services so that no VOIP data was able to get through - hmmm, I wonder why?

Said Chris Murray, Director of Government Affairs for VOIP provider Vonage, of a customer of a subsidiary of Madison River, ?They gave no notice [to the customer]. [His Vonage service] had been working and one day he woke up and it didn?t work.?

FCC Chairman Michael Powell said that the FCC ?saw a problem, and we acted swiftly to ensure that Internet voice service remains a viable option for consumers,? adding that the industry ?must adhere to certain consumer protection norms if the Internet is to remain an open platform for innovation.? [/quote]

decaturtxcowboy hath wroth:

Wrong. There were no charges, only an investigation fishing for suitable charges. Madison River Comm agreed to a consent decree without offering any plea. There were no rule violations cited, violations, or notice of apparent liability presented by the FCC. There wasn't even a complaint. It was strictly an investigation which was subsequently terminated by the consent decree and a payoff. Basically, Madison River Comm paid the FCC $15K to get off their back. The Consent Decree:

1. To avoid the expenditure of additional resources that would be required to further litigate the issues raised in the Investigation, and in consideration for the termination of the Investigation in accordance with the terms of this Consent Decree, Madison River agrees to make a voluntary payment to the United States Treasury, without further protest or recourse to a trial de novo, in the amount of fifteen thousand dollars (,000.00)

The FCC order terminating the investigation:

Subsequent posturing by Chairman Powell:

Since it was NOT an enforcement action, it is not listed on the FCC Enforcement Burro actions:

Note that this was almost 2 years ago.

So someone coughed up $15,00 when they did no wrong, never were charged with a violation, never had a ruling against them. What if they didn't?

They were paid off and the dogs were called off

No doubt.

It never got that far.

decaturtxcowboy hath wroth:

I would have done the same thing. A small ISP such as Madison River Comm does not have the financial resources or business case to navigate a major judicial ordeal such as demonstrating whether the FCC has oversight over telecommunications companies offering selective transit services. One horde contends that the FCC does, under the must carry rule it imposes on cable providers and because transit protection under the common carrier principle requires that the transit carrier does not touch the content. Another horde claims the FCC does not, because there literally is no specific law, rule, or ruling that even suggests such a principle.

Madison River Comm knew of the issues, which have been around since about 2003, and prematurely decided to ignore the obvious implications and plod ahead by offering VoIP services, but also blocking access to other VoIP services. My impression (guess) is that they screwed up the IP port setup on their router and the blocking was mostly accidental. Dunno for sure.

Sensing the possibility of finally deciding the matter, the FCC blundered ahead with an "investigation", also known as a fishing expedition. Madison River Comm wisely decided that they were not in the business of settling regulatory conflictd and supporting the legal establishment. They wiggled out of the mess as best they could. The $15,000 was effectively a fine for fatally injuring the pride of the dissapointed FCC attorneys in their inability to get front page attention, political appointments, and future employment by the large corporations lining both sides of the issues. Much larger settlements have been paid to avoid a plague of attorneys.

The issue is far from being settled. AT&T was allowed to buy BellSouth only after promising a fabulous 2 years of net neutrality before imposeing selective internet services on their paying customers.

A few days ago, the FCC Commissars were grilled by a partial senate committee specifically on their position on net neutrality.

Note the polarization by political party. Worse, many factions have added their own agendas to the net neutrality issue, thus expanding both the issues, as well as furthur polarizing those involved. This is going to take some congressional action to settle the issue, which no doubt will include these private agendas to muddle the basic principles.

Net Neutrality references:

If you'd replied to teh original question properly instead of with a oneliner, you'd not now be having this annoying conversation. The right answer to JN's question was probably

- in the US, see FCC vs Foobar Inc. Outside the US, I can't comment.

*sigh*.

This happens all the time. Work out the cost of defending yourself against the suit, viable or not, and then decide if its easier to pay a small fine and walk away from the incident.

Big companies use this all the time in trademark and other disputes against smaller competitors. The little guy just cant afford to pay.

Take the case of a local school near me in the UK. They have a uniform policy which a pupil has violated gratuitously. Her parents are now suing the school for discrimination (she's muslim and wants to wear the full veil) and violation of her human rights by forcing her to stick to policy. The school simply can't afford 500K to fight thecase, so they'll probably have to concede, even though they're legally in the right.

[snip] Mar 21, 2006 - LAS VEGAS, Nev. at TelecomNext show.

Federal Communications Chairman Kevin Martin said that his agency has the authority to police any so-called net neutrality violations, both in the voice and video arenas. [/snip]

Am curious about what he is saying.

decaturtxcowboy hath wroth:

Ask the head of any regulatory agency and you'll find that expansion of powers is all they think about. Of course he'll claim full authority to regulate just about everything in sight.

That was also before AT&T got to Keven Martin somehow. See:

and note how he first stalled on voting on the AT&T BellSouth merger. When he was finally was forced to confront the issue (and his own previous position statements), he crafted an interesting line: On the day the deal was approved, December 29, Martin released a statement to the Senate committee saying that some of the negotiated conditions were "discriminatory and run contrary to commission policy and precedent." which rather looks like a 180 degree position change. What he's saying is that he supports net neutrality but won't enforce it. He also claims that in the absense of wide spread abuse, there's no need for additional regulation. Kinda sounds like he claims authority, but plans to do absolutely nothing.

In his prepared statement to the Senate Committee which was suppose to address the issue, he managed to expound about everything except net neutrality, which somehow has morphed into some kind of consumer protection issue.

In case you haven't noticed, the Republicans are lining up on the big ISP's side, while the Democrats are lining up on the side of net neutrality. It's amazing what money and power will buy these days.

which was suppose to

While the so called net neutrality war was along the lines of tiered service, i.e. if you are not a big player or don't buy into one, then you get second rate passage on the backbone, the Madison River case was about blocked VoIP traffic which competed against their long distance rate plans.

With all the about-face remarks and posturing on both sides of the fence, its almost impossible to keep track and provide links on just who said what and when.

The most salient point that concerns me is bandwidth-intensive peer-to-peer applications such as BitTorrent that can cripple my WISP networks. Fortunately the FCC has a point in their four-part statement about Net Neutrality.

"3. C1. I can block any activity that consumes excessive bandwidth; may it be by a port, IP, or URL basis.

1. I can put data transfer limits on the subscribers; may it be real time, daily, or monthly (as annotated in a user agreement).
2. I can prohibit subscribers from using their own client units; may it be a too high of gain antenna or a mesh client network using my service for base access, i.e. using DD-WRT on their radio that they use to connect to me.

On Sat, 03 Feb 2007 01:03:10 GMT, decaturtxcowboy wrote in :

I didn't think so, but thanks for the confirmation.

No problem, I'm glad that I could confirm your not keeping up with the news.