CERF URGES FCC AND COMMERCE TO EMBRACE OPEN BROADBAND NETWORKS
Federal regulators “appear to have at their core the single-minded but mistaken notion that open, nondiscriminatory telecommunications platforms no longer serve the public interest when they are used to provide so- called ‘broadband’ services,” Vint Cerf WROTE Mon. to key Washington officials, adding “the FCC appears determined to deny CLECs and ISPs the very capabilities they need to survive.” Cerf, co-creator of Internet Protocol (IP) standard used for Internet and now senior vp-Internet Architecture & Technology for WorldCom, wrote FCC Chmn. Powell and Commerce Dept. Secy. Donald Evans urging open broadband markets to promote competition. “If you want competition there is one absolute way to guarantee it,” Cerf told our affiliated Washington Internet Daily -- namely, that federal regulators should ensure that “we compete within each medium.”
Powell has said since ascending to FCC top spot that he was less concerned with competition within particular broadband segment than with competition between types of services. Cerf dismissed that so-called intramodal competition, however, calling such competition one of several “key mistaken ‘factual’ assumptions.” DSL and cable often don’t compete against each other because of DSL distance limits from central offices and fact that cable is mostly residential, he said. He also said satellite and fixed wireless services suffered from line-of-sight restrictions, latency and precipitation effects. To introduce competition when technology is limiting ubiquitous multiple service options, Cerf said “I am persuaded that open access to all (italics in original) transmission media is the only way to guarantee that every ISP can reach every possible subscriber by every means available.”
FCC has shown little inclination to impose open access on cable, and debate on Capitol Hill has been opposite -- lifting access burdens from ILECs, something also being examined in FCC’s rulemaking. Cerf acknowledged political difficulty of applying open access to other platforms, but said “should the United States Government decide that it does not have the will or inclination to require that one of the two dominant modalities -- cable -- create an open platform, it should not lack the wisdom to ensure that the one remaining platform -- telephony -- remains open to all.” Asked about his apparent endorsement of unequal regulatory systems, Cerf called it “a terrible outcome.” But he dismissed ILECs’ argument that they shouldn’t have to open up new fiber added for DSL service, saying it wasn’t true that such deployments constituted a new network worthy of exemption from regulation. “It’s very creative of them [ILECs] to try to look at it this way,” Cerf told us, but bottom line is that new additions are made to network that is “monopoly-controlled… Whether it’s new fiber or old twisted-pair, it doesn’t matter.”
“In all of the broadband areas I know of there isn’t competition or there isn’t enough,” he said, and it has to do in part with restrictions on network access: “Spectrum is owned… cable is given exclusive franchises.” As for fair compensation for those obtaining access to broadband networks for their own provision of services, Cerf noted that U.S. Supreme Court recently said FCC’s TELRIC (total element long run incremental cost) standard was consistent with Telecom Act. Cerf said “I believe the intent of the Telecom Act was to bring competition to broadband services.”
WorldCom would benefit greatly from open networks advocated by Cerf, and he told us: “Of course I'm an interested party… If you've been watching our stock price, you understand my interest.” But he said that long before WorldCom’s recent woes, issue of lack of competition in broadband “has been festering,” and he noted he has spoken twice with NTIA Dir. Nancy Victory and also with Powell on the subject. Those discussions were oral, he said, and he realized recently that written remarks to Evans and Powell would go into record: “I hope it will stimulate a serious discussion.”