Public Knowledge: Spurring Online Video Could Speed Deregulation

Also argues that FCC should include billing practices when looking at network nondiscrimination

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 6/27/2012 9:53:45 AM

Public Knowledge president Gigi Sohn plans to tell Congress that the communications industry can be deregulated if policymakers take steps to spur online video competition.

In prepared testimony for the Future of Video Hearing in the House Communication Subcommittee, Sohn says that technology is finally able to eliminate the "physical bottleneck control" of video distribution, and that if online video is fostered, "they can begin to disengage from regulations that were designed to counter the effects of this bottleneck control."

But among those steps, she suggests, would be for the FCC to conclude that billing practices can fall under the nondiscrimination prohibitions of its network neutrality rules.

Sohn says those rules have loopholes that need closing, including arguing the FCC "need[s] to take into account the fact that that discrimination can happen through billing, as well as through Internet 'fast lanes' and other forms of technological discrimination."

The FCC, as part of the rules, allowed for usage-based pricing as a legitimate business plan, one that National Cable & Telecommunications Association president Michael Powell said this week was necessary to fairly allocate the costs of broadband service.