Name checks Uber: ‘The largest taxi company in the country doesn’t own any vehicles …’
WASHINGTON – Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler late last week delivered an address to the Brookings Institution, a well known liberal-leaning Washington, D.C., think tank, highlighting the success of the National Broadband Plan
“Expanding broadband requires better network technology,” the chief regulator at the FCC said. “It requires more competition. It requires that companies continue to invest to satisfy consumer demands for bigger, better and more broadband. It requires that broadband providers not be able to limit competition in broadband-dependent markets, like apps or online services, by invoking their gatekeeper power.”
Wheeler continued: “And it requires that limitations on consumer demand – whether on the basis of geography, or economic circumstances, or disability – be removed. Simply put, broadband should be available to everyone everywhere. My message today is simple: The job of the FCC is to exercise its authority with both discretion and determination so that technology, competition, investment and consumer empowerment are able to work together to reach our nation’s broadband goals.”
The U.S. Department of Commerce estimates that 96% of working Americans use mobile devices or the Internet as part of their daily lives while 62% reported the Internet as being an integral part of their job. The Boston Consulting Group estimates that mobile Internet contributes $4.5 trillion to consumers each year.
Wheeler made note of how much the Internet has transformed the economic landscape in just a few short years. “Today, the largest taxi company in the country doesn’t own any vehicles, the largest overnight lodging company doesn’t own any hotels, and the fastest growing of the top 10 retailers has no showrooms. What they do have is easy access to a broadband network, which enables them to assemble resources in new ways, present them to the public in new ways, and define an economic future that is task-based as opposed to the production-based economy of the pre-broadband era.”
Wheeler went on to defend the recently in effect Open Internet Order.
“Here is a simple statement of fact. Broadband is the most powerful and pervasive network in the history of the planet,” Wheeler said. “Suggestions that it be without fully effective oversight are unthinkable.”
He went on to say “but the kinds of oversight designated by the Open Internet order are a new regulatory model designed for new network times. I keep describing this oversight as a ‘referee on the field who can throw the flag.’ In our implementation, I plan to adhere to the wisdom that the best referees do not make themselves part of the game unnecessarily.”
Wheeler also once more reiterated that any regulation would be extremely light touch because high-speed Internet has become so vital to economic activity.
“We are arbiters of last resort, not first resort,” Wheeler said. “We will not micromanage networks as was done in the pre-broadband days. This means no retail rate regulation, no network unbundling and no tariffs. In short, no ‘utility-style regulation.’ In that environment, at a time when consumers are demanding better broadband, why would a rational broadband provider not make the investment to give it to them?”
Wheeler concluded by saying, “If we succeed in accomplishing the agenda, and I am determined that we will, new generations of American innovators will be able to combine their technical abilities and entrepreneurial instincts with broadband’s capacities to produce great things – things that today we cannot begin to imagine.”
