Decision in Verizon Communications Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission

§ Diverse markets - Telecommunications markets can local, regional, or global. Furthermore, customer can include residential, business, and government markets.

Cable systems regulations are less strict, but still come with federal limits on ownership. The Cable television consumer protection and competition act of 1992 influenced the congress to direct the FCC to establish two types of limits defining the line between the owner’s reach of operation, “horizontal,” and the cable operator’s integration with content providers, ”vertical.” The horizontal rule provided cable companies with 30 percent national pay, and no more than 40 percent to the vertical rule. These rules were tested in the case of Time Warner Entertainment Co. v. FCC as unconstitutionally arbitrary. The court said, “we recognize that in drawing a numerical line an agency will ultimately indulge in some inescapable residue of arbitrariness… But to pass even the arbitrary and capricious standard, the agency must at least reveal a rational connection between the facts found and the choice made” (pg. 408, ch. 9, The FCC and Broadcast Licensing).

Verizon’s business is most heavily influenced by the advancements in technology, but other industry changes and government decision making are other social issues changing Verizon. As previously discussed in the essay, Net Neutrality is a bill that projects the future of the telecommunications industry. In the case that it is protected it will prevent a monopoly of the internet which will benefit more than just consumers, but for Verizon the abolishment of the bill will mean opportunity to increase profits through selling the internet since it will no longer be a free utility (Maisto, 2014). Thus, the industries future profits lye on the decision of Net Neutrality.

The second video “Moyers & Company: Is Net Neutrality Dead?” is about a debate regarding net neutrality, which is the right to communicate freely online, keeping the major internet service providers like Verizon and Comcast from increasing costs for costumers to not slow down or block any content they want to use, also called price discrimination, a service offered at different prices by the same provider in different markets. As there are only few internet providers, barriers are set by limiting the area where some of them are allowed to supply their services to, limiting competition and increasing costs for consumers.

Federal Communications Commission, otherwise known as the FCC, voted two-to-one in May of 2017, to begin the tearing down of the net neutrality law (Rushe), that which protected individuals from companies that purposefully slowed down service lanes so as to regulate what was being broadcasted across computers. Chief internet official Ajit Pai at the FCC stated that he believed that the dismantling of the net neutrality laws could pave the way for a more competitive marketplace, that which would “lift ‘heavy-handed’ internet regulations that overly restricted internet providers” (White). The repealing of net neutrality seems to mainly garner approval from big companies, such as Verizon, and more recently, Comcast, companies that would do well by the repealing of such a law. With net neutrality gone companies such as those listed above would be able to, legally, regulate and control what people saw on the internet by slowing down or speeding up lanes depending on the affiliation the company has with that specific website (Finley). However, even with Title II in effect, some companies have found a way to circumvent those rules in order to ‘play favorites’ as it were. For instance, when AT&T customers access the Direct TV’s streaming service they may find that the data extrapolated from the service used did not count towards their current data limit’s (Finley). It is also believed that with no regulations in place regarding net neutrality, companies have the potential of becoming dictators and blocking

According to an article from the New York Times by Rebecca R. Rutz and Steve Lohrfeb, they quoted the FCC commissioner Tom Wheeler is saying, “[they are using] all of the tools in our tool box to protect innovators and consumers” (Ruiz and Lohrfeb). The FCC is trying to make the Internet be considered as a public utility so that it can be under the same jurisdiction as a phone, TV, and radio. The reason why this would be beneficial is because FCC can now control the Internet and can make cable companies not be allowed to charge fees, slow speeds, and charge companies for throttling bandwidth. By not allowing cable companies to enforce their new profit scheme, they are allowing freedom of speech to flourish online. Censorship of any kind that limits speech is very powerful and it should be deemed illegal by the government’s jurisdiction.

“At the end of the day, the purpose of advertising is to sell. Marketers who ignore this fundamental usually get into trouble.” (Chimoff, 2014) Verizon has been a strong competitor in the electronic communication arena for years. Verizon totes that consumers are looking to get the latest devices, but these devices are only as good as the network they are on. They boast to be the network with the most coverage availability and fastest internet speeds. Fiber-optic technology provides the most efficient and reliable way to transmit data to your home. As the largest national provider to offer 100% fiber optics straight to the home, Verizon’s FiOS delivers a faster entertainment and communication experience simply by transmitting data as pulses of light through hair-thin bundles of glass. While other cable companies connect to homes using copper, FiOS stands alone using the latest technology that can support future innovations in communication and

the August of 2005, the F.C.C. adopted a very important policy statement regarding net neutrality. This policy statement protects several things that are essential to anyone who frequently uses the Internet. It gives consumers the freedom to access any content and to use any application within the law. In early December, 2017, the F.C.C. voted to repeal it. However, just over half of the US states have made attempts to pass legislation that reinforces net neutrality. Net Neutrality protects American “internet freedom”, ensuring that the people can make full use of the internet and prevents Internet Service Providers from having too much control.

The FCC’s move will allow companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon to charge internet companies for speedier access to consumers and to block outside services they don’t like. The change also axes a host of consumer protections, including privacy requirements and rules barring unfair practices that gave consumers an avenue to pursue complaints about price gouging.

Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission, give broadcasters the chance to share public issues on broadcast stations, the fairness doctrine help broadcasters with licenses. When there are frequency monopolies, it could be an issue for other broadcaster that have other views. The government reinforce the licenses to allow people the opportunity to broadcast on a frequency. Throughout the court decision in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission, Justice Bryon White wrote that the First Amendment does not give a person a right to a licenses or monopolizes a radio frequency. So, it means that a person cannot own the radio frequency to prevent another person from using the

Claim of Policy: The United States Federal Communications Commission should not repeal the current net neutrality rules.

Yet at the same time, these two sets of companies compete for customers, creating a glaring conflict of interest. Whilst these issues seemed to be resolved by the middle of the twentieth century, the advent of the internet introduced a whole new set of problems. The term net neutrality, first coined by Tim Wu, Professor of the Columbia University Law School in 2003, came to represent a question that had long been perceived as being of relatively little concern – is unfettered access to the internet a right, or a privilege? (Cheng and Bandyopadhay 2011: 60) (Greenstein 2007: 61, 85) The debate around internet regulation and net neutrality first gained traction in 2002, when the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) controversially ruled that broadband internet was to be classed as an information service rather as a telecommunications service, and thus made it exempt from a considerable range of content and conduct regulations that it would otherwise have been subject to. For those Americans, as exemplified by organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who saw the internet as a space of uninhibited free expression that needed to be protected from the influence of corporate meddling, this decision was very frustrating. As promoted by Wu and others, net neutrality came to represent the belief that ‘internet data packets should move nondiscriminatorily’ – that is, the data (‘packets’ essentially being a technical

I. BACKGROUND: CelluComm and GMCT and the Industry AT&T’s Bell Laboratories cellular telephone networking innovation had enabled several cellular network operators to get licenses from the FCC to operate in separate license territories right about the same time AT&T was broken up in early 1980s. These operators were either companies like Cellular Communication Services, Inc. (CelluComm) or small entrepreneurs who had won license territories through the lottery system. CelluComm’s  president  and  founder  Ric  Jenkins  was  known  for  being  an  aggressive businessman  who  had  extended  it  to  a  200  million  dollar  enterprise  ranking  in  the  top  20  of  the industry.  Key  to

8. Threat of New Entrants: “There are a number of low-cost carriers (LCCs) in the domestic market and the Company competes with LCCs over a very large part of its network.”

This market allows organization a free long term ability to adjust their good services and prices with the changes in the market conditions. Thus AT&T should take advantage of the freedom in this market structure and ensure that their supply and prices are correlated to their demands.