The Consumer Project on Technology is planning a demonstration on Thursday to protest the monopoly that would be created by the merger of Time Warner and AOL. The CPT argues that cable operators want the freedom to speed up access to affiliated or favored Internet content, while deliberately putting competitors on a slower service.

by Patricia Fusco
of internetnews.com

The forthcoming Democratic and Republican national conventions are not the only gatherings bracing for massive protests.

The Consumer Project on Technology plans to rally a massive protest at the Federal Communications Commission meeting scheduled for Thursday.

Nader
The Green Party's presidential nominee, Ralph Nader, founded the CPT in 1995.

Dubbed the "Protect the Internet" protest, the CPT is organizing a rally to focus on the FCC's continued refusal to establish a national broadband policy in support of "open access."

The July 27th demonstration will take place outside of the FCC's offices and coincide with the Commission's hearing on the proposed America Online, Inc. and Time-Warner, Inc. merger.

CPT contends that most residential consumers currently have two choices for broadband Internet connectivity, digital subscriber line access or cable modem services. The group argues that DSL operators, because they employ telephone lines, are required by the FCC to open up their networks to competing Internet service providers. Meanwhile, plants are not obliged to share their networks with rivals.

Understanding testing
Last week American Online and Time Warner announced they would test a shared cable system in Columbus, Ohio. Earlier in the year, Excite@Home released its "Memorandum of Understanding" with the approval of AT&T Corp. stating that the companies supported "open access" and would provide competitive access on its networks when an exclusive contract expires in two years.

Excite@Home fulfilled expectations by signing an agreement with MindSpring Enterprises, Inc. to share its high-speed cable connectivity when exclusivity is no longer an issue for the firm.

CPT accepts that cable operators have announced a variety of plans to build an infrastructure that would share ISP access, but that it would provider different levels of service for their banded services over rival content providers.

According to the CPT, the history of the cable service is to discriminate in favor of affiliated services, and to use bottlenecks to influence the distribution of video content. Now cable operators want the freedom to speed up access to affiliated or favored Internet content, while deliberately putting others on a slower service.

The group cites a 1999 Cisco Systems, Inc. white paper, Controlling Your Network — A Must for Cable Operators. According to Cisco, the top provider of hardware and software for proprietary cable platforms, system operators will be able to restrict incoming broadcasts from competitors as well as subscribers' outgoing access to the competitors' sites.

While the Cisco white paper is of interest to cable operators, modem-based routing is wholly capable of performing the same type of packet prioritization, regardless of the communications platform used for transport over the Internet.

Don't trust the giants, trust the little people
James Love, CDT director, said the FCC should not trust big business. Federal regulators should do their jobs and protect consumers and the Internet.

"I think the FCC's approach is we trust AT&T, we trust Time Warner, we trust AOL," Love said. "We feel the government needs to do their job and start protecting protect open access and the Internet."

Love added that the rush to deploy broadband systems has placed the regulatory cart before the horse.

"I think the idea that you build a network and sort out the regulatory issues later is a mistake," Love said. "In this case the FCC has to start out with a strong state about non-discriminatory access to cable systems. The policy should lead, not follow."

In June, FCC Chairman William Kennard indicated that he favored competitive access to cable systems, and that he believed AT&T and AOL would do the right thing to respond wisely to market forced.

The FCC also announced it would set the groundwork for to review cable communications competition this year.

—End