Resources

Overview

What is Open Access?

Featured Issues

Spectrum Reform

Broadband/Open Access Press Releases

MAP Reacts to Verizon's Open Platform Announcement

MAP Reacts to Comcast's Net Neutrality Violation

MAP Critical of DOJ Net Neutrality Filing

MAP Files Suit Challenging FCC Internet Cable Ruling - Case to Decide Future of 'Open Access'

MAP Expresses Disappointment in Reasoning on Ruling

Broadband/Open Access Legal Filings

MAP, Free Press and Public Knowledge Press FCC to Stop Comcast's Internet Blocking

MAP and PISC Urge FCC to Protect Competition in 700MHz Auction

MAP and PISC Call For Changes to National Broadband Application

MAP Urges Congress to Support White Spaces

MAP and NAF Urge More Testing for White-Spaces Devices

All Broadband/Open Access Legal Filings

Broadband/Open Access Articles

When Competition Doesn't Quite Cut It

Steps toward a high speed, affordable, ubiquitous wireless digital future

Tacit Collusion in the AWS-1 Auction: The Signaling Problem

The 700 MHz Auction, Open Access and Municipal Wireless Networks

How Incumbents Blocked New Entrants In The AWS-1 Auction: Lessons for the Future

Overview

“Open access”, the ability of any citizen to chose their Internet service provider (ISP), access any content or service, and transmit any information desired, is the hallmark of the existing Internet. The medium has thus become, in the words of the Supreme Court “as diverse as human thought.” Low barriers to entry and broad accessibility have allowed anyone who wishes to make information available throughout the world, or organize communities across vast distances.

But nothing dictates it will remain this way. The Internet evolved as an open medium because, early in its evolution, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued regulations requiring that telephone companies open their networks to these competing services and that they carry the traffic of rivals without interference.

For years, the FCC has refused to require cable companies to open their networks in the same way that they required the telephone companies to open their networks to the dial-up Internet. As a result, millions of Americans who can receive broadband Internet only via cable must accept the monopoly terms of their cable company.

In many cities (although, for technical reasons, not in rural and not in some suburban areas) telephone companies offer a competing form of broadband called “DSL.” The FCC rules that guaranteed open access in dial-up also required open access for DSL. Although technically inferior and more complicated to use than cable broadband, DSL at least offered some subscribers to use the ISP of their choice and unimpeded access to all Internet content or services.

The FCC has now announced it will end the rules that require telephone companies to open their DSL lines to other ISPs. From now on, DSL subscribers will not have a choice of provider. The FCC describes this as “regulatory parity” that will “spur broadband investment” by the phone companies.

Instead, it will kill the free expression that makes the Internet so vital a part of modern life. The technology allows cable and phone companies to subtly interfere with users trying to access rival content, while making it easy to access the cable or phone companies’ own content. Cable companies have also negotiated deals with the largest ISPs to transition narrowband subscribers to broadband services under cable terms. Already major ISPs speak of changing their broadband service to a “premium cable” type service. Users would roam through “walled gardens” of cable content with diminished opportunities to create their own content or seek content from others.

When MAP began to fight for open access in 1998, few heeded the warnings that the Internet could lose its free and open nature. Now, with over 20% of Americans receiving the Internet via broadband connections, changes have already begun to occur. As more people transition from the open dial-up Internet to the walled garden of cable broadband, the “taming” of the Internet will continue. By the time major changes in the character of the Internet are noticeable, it will be too late. The time to act to protect the Internet is now.