 Welcome to New America everyone, thanks for being here. My name is Prem Thirvedi. I'm the policy director at the Open Technology Institute here. And it's my pleasure to welcome everyone to this important conversation on the FCC's restoration of its title to authority to regulate broadband internet access services. Appreciate everyone joining us here today, both in person here and online. New America is dedicated to renewing the promise of America by continuing to realize our nation's highest ideals, honestly confronting the challenges that are caused by rapid technological and social change and seizing the opportunities that those changes create. And the Open Technology Institute here at New America is part of our group of technology and democracy programs, tech-centered programs that share a vision of a world in which technological innovation produces tools through which people advance and strengthen democracy and reduce inequality. And since 2009 at OTI's inception, our mission has been to research and advocate for policy and technical solutions that drive equitable access to digital technology and its benefits. It's all too easy in important discussions, like for example those around AI today, to lose sight of the fact that Americans cannot equitably benefit from the digital age and its innovations without high-quality, ubiquitous and affordable broadband. That's exactly why OTI has been focused on connectivity since its inception nearly 15 years ago. Broadband access is too fundamental and too important for Americans to be without an FCC that's empowered to conduct meaningful oversight of ISPs, to study network performance, and to protect consumers. We need the FCC, in short, to be what Chairwoman Rosenworcel has called, quote, a referee on the field looking out for the public interest. This is why OTI was a staunch supporter of the FCC's 2015 Open Internet Order rules that were issued thanks to the agency's leadership and to dogged advocacy from a broad coalition. And it's why we fought the rollback of those rules in 2017. And now here we are again in 2024, poised for the FCC under the leadership of Chairwoman Rosenworcel to restore its authority under Title II of the Communications Act to regulate broadband internet access service. So this is, of course, about net neutrality, which remains vital to content creators, to small businesses and to artists and to consumers at large. But Title II reclassification is also about more than that. It's about allowing the agency to take greater action on a range of issues, including competition and privacy, cybersecurity and network resilience, and public safety. So today's event dives deeper into the benefits of Title II reclassification that go beyond net neutrality. So with all of that, the outset, let me say we are delighted to have with us today Ramesh Nagarajan, Chief Legal Advisor in the office of Chairwoman Rosenworcel, here today to deliver a keynote. After he offers some remarks, we'll move to a panel discussion moderated by OTI's own Raza Panjwani, Senior Counsel here for Connectivity and an excellent group that will unpack the wide-ranging implications of Title II reclassification. Just a few more words about Ramesh. Prior to taking up his current role, he was Chair of the Chairwoman's Legal Advisor on Wireline and Enforcement Issues. And before that, he served in the FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau as Deputy Division Chief for the Competition Policy Division. There are more details, which I won't offer right now, but suffice it to say Ramesh brings a wealth of experience to the table and we're fortunate to have him with us here today. So please join me in welcoming him. Thanks for inviting me today and thank you for that very kind introduction. You know, it was almost four years ago the COVID pandemic upended daily life. As Chairman Rosenworcel says, we were all told to mask up, stay home, and hunker down. Almost overnight, for so many of us, work, school, healthcare, social life, all moved online. As a society, we did respond. We made a historic commitment to broadband for all. Congress invested billions of dollars in broadband deployment and affordability, culminating, of course, in the $65 billion investment in the bipartisan infrastructure law. Because Congress understood, once and for all, that everyone everywhere needs broadband, needs it to be accessible and affordable. What the pandemic also did, like nothing before, was to make it crystal clear that broadband is essential infrastructure for modern life. Sure, we're back for events like this in person, but just think for a second about how much of office work or civic life entertainment has shifted online just since 2019. Even as internet access has become more critical to our society, however, our institutions haven't kept up. Today, there is no expert agency ensuring the internet is fast, open, and fair. Ever since the modern internet emerged in the 1990s, it was the FCC that had that role. That makes sense. These are principles deep in the Communications Act. Your phone company couldn't stop your call from going through or edit what you were saying. You picked up your phone, you dialed the numbers, and they went to where you wanted them to go. Now, today, communications means predominantly access to the internet. But in 2017, the previous administration walked away. It gave up the FCC's authority over the most important infrastructure of our time. The chairman opposed that rash decision then, and she has proposed the FCC restores authority and bring back net neutrality. I know today's event is about Title II beyond net neutrality, but before we get beyond net neutrality, I think it's important to underscore two points. Now, first, net neutrality on a bipartisan basis. First, on the FCC, on a bipartisan basis, for many years across multiple chairs, different parties, has worked to protect the open internet and net neutrality. And second, over those multiple decades and many chairs and many parties, it became clear in a series of court decisions that Title II is the sustainable legal foundation for net neutrality. Well, let me unpack this a bit. So, as I said, for many years, the FCC has stood for the open internet. It was first chairman Michael Powell, President George W. Bush's first FCC chair, who talked about the four internet freedoms in 2004. These included consumers' freedom to access content, run applications, and connect devices of their own choice. It was under chairman Martin, President Bush's second FCC chair, that the Commission unanimously adopted the internet policy statement. This affirmed consumers had the right to access the content, run the applications, and connect devices of their own choosing. These meant that consumers and not broadband providers made their own, consumers, not broadband providers, made their own choices about what they wanted to see and where they wanted to go on the internet. The FCC took action on these principles. They were incorporated as conditions into several merger orders under both Republican and Democratic administrations. They therefore applied to major companies like AT&T and Comcast and Verizon. Let's turn to 2008. Broadband was classified under Title I, but the FCC was serious about protecting the open internet. There was a complaint filed to the FCC that Comcast was blocking and slowing down BitTorrent. It was chairman Martin's FCC that attempted to enforce the principles in the internet policy statement that consumers should be able to access the content and applications of their own choosing. It went to court, and the DC circuit said no. It said the FCC's decision was not supported by the Commission's ancillary authority, and it noted that broadband was classified as the Title I service. Okay, let's turn to 2010. Chairman Jenikowski, President Obama's first FCC chair, sought to use Section 706 into the Telecommunications Act as authority for net neutrality rules, but keeping broadband under Title I. Again, the DC circuit said no. This time, the court agreed Section 706 was a valid use of regulatory authority, but the rules that said no discrimination, no blocking, these were invalid because they treated broadband providers as common carriers, and we know common carriers are classified under Title II. So the Commission went back on it. In 2015, it classified broadband as a Title II service, and this time, the classification decision and the net neutrality rules, which included rules against blocking, throttling, fast lanes, and a general conduct standard, they were upheld in full by the DC circuit. However, in 2017, the last administration reopened the issue and repealed net neutrality despite a fierce public backlash. That brings us to today. It was last October where the FCC voted to begin the process to reverse this decision and bring back the protections that ensure the internet is fast, open, and fair. So I hope that potted history makes two things clear. First, there is a long bipartisan history of the FCC fighting for these rules, fighting for net neutrality. And second, it's the classification of broadband under Title II that is the foundation of strong, legally sustainable net neutrality rules. And those are rules that mean that you can go where you want and do what you want to do online without your provider making those choices for you. It's your choice. But like this event promises, and as the chairman has emphasized, Title II does go beyond net neutrality. It's the part of the law that gives the FCC authority to look out for the public interest. I know that the excellent panelists will get into the details of what this means, but let me mention three areas very briefly. First, national security. The FCC has an important role to play here. It's right in Section 1 of the Communications Act. It says, and this is Section 1 of the Communications Act of 1934, the FCC was created for, among other purposes, the national defense. And the commission has been active on a bipartisan basis in fulfilling this role. Based on a number of recommendations from law enforcement and security agencies, the FCC has revoked the Section 214 authority for four Chinese government-controlled companies to provide telecommunication services in the United States. Now, Section 214, as you may know, is under Title II of the law. So those actions apply to services classified under Title II. Right now, broadband is not classified under Title II. So the commission's decision, while important, does not extend to broadband networks. That is a loophole that chairman thinks needs to be closed. When it comes to cybersecurity, certainly a national security issue. The FCC is part of a whole government approach focusing on identifying and addressing vulnerabilities to critical infrastructure, like broadband networks. But again, Title II does not extend to broadband. So we have limited authority to incorporate updated standards into our network policies. Let's talk about public safety. Title II would provide the legal foundation for the FCC to click outage reports when broadband networks go down. Our current reporting system focuses on long-distance voice outages. That's something that just doesn't make sense in today's world. Today's world, it's broadband connectivity that's essential. And third, let me mention privacy. Section 222 of the Communications Act requires that carriers protect their consumer's proprietary information. And this includes very sensitive information, like location data. My carrier knows certainly that I am here today because I put that in Google before I walk down here. But these privacy protections right now only apply to voice service and not broadband. That doesn't make sense in our always-connected world, with our smartphones constantly within our arms reach. In my case, it's actually two smartphones. You know, there's certainly more to Title II. There's access to critical inputs like utility poles. There's upstating our rules for serving apartment buildings. There's the Universal Service Fund's ability to support broadband that we'll get into shortly. And a word on what Title II is not about. This is Title II with forbearance. So as the chairman has said, the FCC won't regulate rates. But for now, let me close by reminding you where we were 47 months ago. I personally was scrambling to get my kids signed into online school while juggling the sudden shift to full-time telework. March 2020 will be permanently etched into the memories of all of us who lived through that time. I would submit it should also remind us just how essential internet access is and why we need it to be fast, open, and fair. And in the end, that is why we need Title II. Thank you. Thanks so much, Ramesh. Appreciate those remarks. And we'll now bring our panel up onto the stage, moderated by OTI's Reza Panjwani. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us. Find the right set of notes here. So thank you for that great table setting, Ramesh. I think that really helps to place this proceeding and this bit of the law into a good bit of context. Title II has been a bit of a policy cipher over the last 20 years, where as we've discussed the correct framing and the correct approach to regulating broadband internet access, we've kind of come up to a view, depending on your perspective, it's either this anachronistic, you know, 100-year-old telephone law or on the other end of the spectrum, it's just the obvious conclusion to reading the definition of telecommunication service in the act and going, aha, that's what internet access is, which a certain late Supreme Court justice might agree with that approach. Now, I'm going to introduce our lovely panelists here who are going to talk a bit about how Title II is still relevant to approaches to broadband access, how that filters down to their organizations, their memberships, and then we'll get a little bit into some of the policy aspects, including that neutrality, but going beyond a bit to sort of shed some light on why this is so relevant today and going forward. So working down the row here, Angie Cronenberg is the president of Encompass. She is responsible for managing the Encompass... As president, she is responsible for managing the Encompass policy team and its work for federal, state, and local governments. She is the association's efforts on membership and business development. She joined the association in 2013 as its chief advocate and general counsel and became president in 2023. Angie has successfully influenced and shaped some of the most complex high-profile matters in the communication space, and she's an expert on technology and telecom policy, including broadband deployment, access, availability, universal service, net neutrality, merger review, competition policy, administrative law, making her perfect for this particular deep dive. She's also been an integral to the association's modernization and growth. Prior to Encompass, Angie was legal advisor to FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, where she was primarily responsible for the commissioner's wireline and broadband agenda, including the commissioner's work as chair of three federal, state, and joint boards. Prior to her work at the commission, Angie practiced telecom and media law in Washington, D.C. Next we have Stacy Gray. Stacy is the senior director for U.S. policy at the Future of Privacy Forum and supports FPF's U.S. engagement for consumer privacy research analysis and policymaker education. At FPF she has spent many years focusing on the privacy implications of data collection in online and mobile advertising, platform regulation, cross-device tracking, smart homes, and the Internet of Things, including publishing extensive work and providing congressional testimony on the intersection of emerging technologies and federal privacy regulation and enforcement. Next we have Kevin Erickson, director of the Future of Music Coalition. Kevin directs the coalition and nonprofit think tank at the intersection of music, technology, and policy to ensure that musicians' independent voices are heard on the issues that impact them, working for policies and systems that align the interests of music creators and fans, and that allow diverse local music communities to thrive. Kevin's background includes direct experience in many aspects of the industry, including concert booking and promotion, community radio, and independent music retail. And he continues to work as a record producer and musician. Finally, we have Kuman Hayati, Senior Strategic Research Associate for Telecommunications Policy at Communications Workers of America. He is responsible for advising the Union's Telecommunications Policy Program. Since 2018, he has supported the Union's Speed Matters campaign promoting public policies that encourage investment in affordable high-speed broadband networks for all. He has also supported CWA's Build Broadband Better campaign to educate the public and legislators on the importance of building broadband infrastructure by highly trained union workers and not low-wage contractors that risk safety and quality. As a representative of CWA, he served on the Digital Empowerment and Inclusion Working Group of the FCC's Equity and Diversity Council. So, welcome. So, I'd like to get things started by talking, you know, at a very high level, we have this proceeding to reclassify broadband internet access service as a Title II service under the FCC's framework for regulation. Now, you know, one of the things you might hear in the chatter about this topic is that's so 2015 or 2008 or 1996 as an approach. We don't need to worry about this. Everything's great. We have apps. We have content streaming. The world is wonderful. We don't need to worry about this. This is just a distraction. I, and I think most of us would pause it by our position in this proceeding. I think that's not true. So, I want to give each of you an opportunity to talk a bit about why Title II is still relevant and how your organizations are thinking about it and some of the topics you want to move forward on once we get this foundational step out of the way. So, Angie. Thank you so much for including me on today's panel. It's really wonderful to be here and I want to acknowledge that today is a really important day. It's the 28th birthday of the 1996 Telecommunications Act which ensured the competition was going to be introduced into the local telecommunications marketplace. It was a bipartisan piece of legislation that was signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton and today's its 28th birthday. 1996 Telecom Act. Why is that important for this conversation? It's because net neutrality policy is competition policy. It ensures that consumers, small businesses can access the online content, applications, services of their choice without undue interference by their ISP. And I really look forward to diving deeper into why this is so an important foundational aspect of net neutrality and how ultimately the Title II classification is going to allow for more broadband companies to enter the market and access consumers and give them more choice. So not only will consumers have choice about online content, they also are going to get more choice for their broadband provider which is critical right now since there's so little choice especially in the home market. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you so much, Reza. So first I should say future privacy forum for those who aren't familiar with this. We are a Washington D.C. based think tank focused on data protection and privacy, law and policy around the world. We have a large global presence as well. And many of our members and supporters are from across a very wide spectrum of business interests including both buys providers and edge providers. So organizationally FPF doesn't have a position or an advocacy role in Title II reclassification. However, Title II reclassification is incredibly relevant to individual privacy for lots of reasons. The most obvious one is that it's the most clear hook arguably mandate that the FCC has for promulgating specific and robust privacy rules for bias providers under section 222 and the CP and I rules that already exist reclassifying bias providers under Title II also automatically exempts them from the current jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission, the FTC which is generally thought to be kind of the privacy cop on the beat in the business world, the lead privacy regulator for the last 20 years or so in the rest of the industry. So this is super relevant. It really gets to the question of who the regulator is going to be and what kind of authority and what the scope of that authority is going to be around privacy. And on that question there are kind of pros and cons to both and one of the things I really want to highlight today is just how dramatically the landscape but the legal and the technology landscape has changed since 2015. Just the introduction and the implementation of the GDPR the general data protection regulation in the EU has been a massive sea change for the online advertising industry in particular as well as the rest of the business world. You know add to that 10 plus new state comprehensive privacy laws in the United States more and more aggressive enforcement from the Federal Trade Commission particularly in the last year we're looking ahead to potential rulemaking from the FTC. So it's a pretty rapidly changing world so a lot of the arguments that we were thinking about in 2016 with respect to which option would be a better or a stronger privacy regulator and enforcer have shifted. We had a strong opinion for instance against the role of the FTC in 2016 might want to look at that anew in light of what they've been doing over the last year. Anyway I can stop there. It is a super super relevant question. Only other thing I will note is that it's very very clear that the FCC has been an active privacy enforcer in its existing role over some of these same entities in their role as telecommunications providers so wireless providers bringing actions and really relevant settlements around issues like super cookies and more recently than that the sharing and aggregation of precise geolocation data for wireless providers so they've been a really strong enforcer in their current role. What we're really talking about with Title 2 Reclassification is web browsing so super super interested to dive in more. Thank you. Kevin so I think you're also taking our one non-lawyer so we have to make sure we've got a diverse range of experiences here but tell us a little bit about what Title 2 means for the creator community and especially with your experience on the music community. Obviously there's so much transformation that's been happening in the music business since we began participating in these conversations around these issues so I was digging through our archives and I brought the compilation CD that we put out in support of net neutrality in what was it like 2009 right and yeah it's great, it holds up but like you know like right so obviously like now compact discs and the sale of compact discs have become outmoded and more and more music listening is happening online there's been these transformational shifts across the board but the basic principles that we approach this issues with from the beginning really haven't changed and that's the musicians and creators generally to be able to sustain careers both in terms of the work piece of it and in terms of the creative expression piece of it they need a couple of basic things they need access to audiences and they need sustainable levels of compensation and to get sustainable levels of compensation you need to have an ecosystem that's characterized by diversity of practice by maximization of choice that means that you get to choose to work with the platforms based on what works best for your business model and getting that neutrality right entitled to ultimately I think continues to be fundamental for both of those pieces of the puzzle for the ability to have the same level of access to audiences that huge corporations have to be able to choose a platform that works for you because it works for you not because they're the platform that has the ability to make the best deal with ISPs right those those basic principles continue to inform how we how we think of these things and then in a post pandemic environment there's there's these new you know the internet was already the center of where the commerce happens the center of where creative expression was happening over the course of the pandemic it became even more central and in this post pandemic environment a lot of that is going to continue to be the case we've seen we work with a lot of arts and culture organizations across disciplines with symphonies and orchestras and dance companies and theater companies all of us lining up behind that neutrality because in part they are reliant on the internet to reach audiences and the same way that individual artists are as well as to fund raising and so over the course of the pandemic we saw all of these new innovative initiatives and some of this is really exciting because it's allowing these institutions that are providing all of these diverse important cultural that are elevating all these diverse voices to be able to connect to audiences in new ways and as we if we contextualize it in the broader framework of equitable access to broadband we're opening up possibilities for these for new forms of access to culture for audiences that historically would have been excluded not to try and put a silver lining on the pandemic but it has opened up a lot of experimentation among the broader arts and culture groups how can we bring bring audiences into these spaces that wouldn't have been able to access them before but the ability to continue to do that and the ability to do that effectively and the ability to you know compete or even just to the ability to speak and the ability to be heard is continues to be dependent on just having like the basic foundational rules of the road that apply to everyone in this space thank you so your organization is quite literally hands on with the internet so what are some of the issues and topics that make title too relevant for your members and your organization first of all I apologize for losing my voice this morning so yeah I'll try to be brief but I'd like to talk about some of this later on so CWA as labor union that represents majority of telecom workers in the US and here from our members on daily basis but things that are happening in the field problems with telecom deployments and issues that are going on audages and so on so CWA believes that title too is very important because it's essential for public safety for network resiliency with title too regulators have authority to require service quality standards and basic safeguards so that networks are there at times of emergency we think it's important for protecting customers during disconnections with title too authorities can require from the companies to notify customers and provide basic protections title too is important for future of lifeline, ACP programs it's essential for making sure that the USF form is done properly and that there's a sustainable funding available in the long term and it's also essential for the federal and state partnership in overseeing broadband infrastructure with title too state authorities can help us partners with the FCC on a lot of issues including pole attachments and other things that are important for deployments great, so I just to highlight some of what we've heard is competition we've heard about privacy, about public safety about traditional innovation access and non-discrimination affordability, reliability these are all sort of different topics that title too opens the door to I'd like to sort of unpack some of that a bit and kind of work through each of them I want to mention though that the issues our organizations I think are not necessarily in agreement on what the exact correct approach should be on affordability or on pole attachments but I think we're in agreement that we need to lay the foundation and then we can get to each of those issues in turn rather than just constantly talking about them prospectively in the future and we can actually move forward with the policy agenda one way or the other so let's kind of talk a bit about competition you talked about Angie both competition in terms of providers for consumers tell me a little bit more today's marketplace for home broadband service is highly concentrated and consumers don't have a lot of choice so most consumers only have one or at most two choices and the higher the speed the broadband the fewer choices they have so often times the most highest speed broadband availability to them is a monopoly what do we do to fix that problem well we need to be promoting and enabling more deployment more broadband deployment in today's marketplace more providers today are offering just broadband service they're not also offering a telecommunication service or a cable video service and this is because consumers now want to be able to access all the different options they can online as a result of that these broadband only providers don't get the same kinds of protections that are afforded by title to the communications act which is what congress amended in the 96 act to ensure that we could promote more network competition so the way encompasses it and we're representing the competitive providers that are entering the market that are doing these builds forcing them to offer a voice telecommunication service in order to access the title to provisions that give them access to the polls access to the buildings access to the customers to be able to bring a petition to the FCC to say here are the local problems that we have and we need you to preempt them they can't do any of that right now unless they also offer a voice product and we think that that's really not great that's not where the market is going the market is going towards a broadband only offerings congress has given significant amounts of funding we heard this from remesh right to ensure that every American can access a broadband network those providers are likely to be broadband only providers they are going to need the title to provisions to help them to build the networks faster and more affordably so we think the title to provisions are absolutely critical for broadband only providers and we've made that case in our comments at the FCC also as I noted we want to ensure that consumers not only have the choice of network companies but that they also once they have their network they can access everything that's online what we see with the encompass members as broadband only providers they really are marketing themselves very differently than how the incumbent telecommunications providers and the incumbent cable operators market themselves in the broadband marketplace they market themselves as net neutrality friendly as privacy friendly like we are an alternative in the marketplace and we have a lot of people who don't know what to do with the network they often times are building fiber to the home sometimes they're building fiber and a fixed wireless connection to meet that last mile connection we want to be sure that they can do that as fast as possible and if they have the non discriminatory access rights that title to gives them they're going to be able to do so not only did we fight the repeal of net neutrality because of this issue there is there are some leftover issues from that repeal that we continue to talk about with the FCC through petition for reconsideration it is that critical to our member companies I'm going to take a moment to break the panel fourth wall here so you mentioned competition and I think it's worth remembering a little bit about how we got here which is at the turn of the century we were transitioning from dial up internet across the board in terms of access with a few exceptions of enterprise lines but the dawn of sort of cable modems DSL fiber off in the distance and there was a question around you know companies may have an incentive to interfere with or distort those connections for financial gain what should we do about that and the menu of options is well we can do structural remedies we can force providers to say you can only sell the pipe and the ISP the internet connection has to be a separate unbundled service which is how you had your telephone bill and your ISP were two separate services that was considered to be a little bit you know interventionist and kind of out of vogue so we could do self regulation we'll just hope companies behave themselves the light middle path was net neutrality was the proposal what if we had anti discrimination rules rather than have this structural remedy we'll have some rules of the road that everyone has to follow and what's interesting is tying back to our theme right of title two having all of these implications beyond net neutrality is I believe in the litigation over in the challenge over the 2017 order to repeal the net neutrality rules you know the court pointed out several areas that were just not addressed in the record pointing out that if you move away from title two what are you going to do about public safety what are you going to do about affordability that's all under title two what are you going to do about pole attachments that's under title two so even as far back as 2017 to 2019 the platform that title two provided to address all these issues was you know noticeable to everyone that COVID has changed a lot right we now have a recognition that every consumer every business in the United States needs to be connected right and we have traditionally had a competition focused analysis and framework in the United States since the 96 act I mean we used to have a monopoly right but there was a decision that was made that competition actually drives more investment drives more innovation and it better serves customers so we think it is really important that the current commission be forward looking right it is not adequate that consumers and businesses just have one choice they need to have multiple choices because that's what's going to drive our industry to provide better service to customers so I was really hard to hear Ramesh include competition in his presentation about why title two is critical so I want to stick with infrastructure topics for a few minutes so Humane if you want to talk a little bit about how you called out public safety network resiliency and some of the deployment issues so if you could go a little bit more detail about how title two implicates those you know really on the ground issues yeah so as I said resiliency is you know important safety is important to know that these networks are there at times of emergency at CWA we believe that existing legacy providers should maintain their networks and have the qualified workforce to do the job loss of a communication service is a matter of life and death and this was something that was evident in 2018 when Verizon was struggling Santa Clara fire department services down to dialogue speeds they spent on for several weeks the fire department complained to the provider Verizon and during this whole time Verizon was trying to op sell a more expensive plan to them and to Verizon's credit credit at the end they accepted their fault and they agreed to voluntarily make some network changes to their business practices but you know that mandatory commitment should not be the way some of these things happen we need mandatory frameworks for it in other examples most consumers do not have title two regulated services for their communications needs right now for example in 2021 85% of wireless 85% of 911 calls were made through a wireless cellular service and then in 2019 during the massive wildfires over half of California county's experience audages and this is not just wireless over 500,000 households lost service to wire line and cable connections that they had so this shows like how important this issue is and with increasing natural disasters title two regulated service has to comply with a lot of requirements in order to maintain their service but with broadband that goes you know that's just out and that's something that we see with these connections that are happening that's something that we see everywhere so in California what the commission did after all these things that happened they started the docket to look into resiliency measures for wireless, VoIP and broadband and among others they required for example 72 hours of backup power in areas that are susceptible to wildfires there and right now California is also looking into establishing service quality rules on broadband and internet but the point I want to make here is that when the commission was like going through this whole thing the arguments weren't by providers that we don't need 72 hours we need 24 hours of backup power and it wasn't over the details of what's needed the main argument that was being made is that broadband is a information service so CPUC you don't have any authority to do anything in this area because the FCC has decided that it's information service so I think with reclassification we can clear the issue and just establish for once that yes regulators can look into issues of public safety and resiliency at this federal and state level and so CPUC is the California Public Utilities Commission and so it's an example of a state stepping in but you know wildfires don't only occur in California right and there are I'm guessing you know other risks to the network and emergency periods in other states and so having title two it sounds like it would be nice to have those protections for all Americans networks and emergency needs so speaking about all Americans and their needs Stacy tell us a bit about the privacy framework you've mentioned there's this discussion around we've advanced in terms of globally honestly how we think about consumer privacy but we talk about privacy often in terms of particular providers or services but the one thing all those services have in common is how you connect to them so you mentioned you know location services is the types of very intimate information that the owners of the data connections that we use to have access to can you tell us a little bit more about how the opportunity I guess to address some of the specific privacy questions about internet access that title two would enable potentially absolutely so as I mentioned section 222 gives I think the most clear and obvious legal authority to promulgate privacy rules following a reclassification there's some argument public knowledge has argued that the FCC has other tools available at its disposal under for example title three but you know but I'm not an expert enough to really speak to that clearly section 222 is the most obvious and the most clear legal hook for this it's interesting that you raise the point about competition and some of the history of this classification scheme because unlike the Federal Trade Commission the FCC has not just a role in competition but an affirmative mandate to promote competition and so there's a reason that CP and I refers to proprietary network information rather than just for example personal information which is the term we use in the rest of the data protection world is because it emerged from a concern about dial up providers having a competitive advantage through their privileged access to information over the top providers and other entities so we know that access to data is a competitive advantage in any sector right then there's a question of are bias providers when it comes to privacy as kind of a pure matter just the privacy of what you do online what websites you visit what services you're using are bias providers uniquely situated in comparison to the rest of the world of edge providers in the access to information about what individuals are doing online there are lots of good reasons to think that they are and advocates have done a great job over the years articulating this the FCC has agreed with many of them with respect to the fact that bias providers have access to the identity of the subscriber access to a level of comprehensiveness of web browsing activity that many edge providers do not have and I think very relevantly sort of a unique relationship with the customer in terms of that subscriber that customer's choices to avoid sharing that data so the data collection itself is almost impossible to avoid you might have other controls at the level of use or sharing but the collection itself cannot be avoided so all of these are things that the Federal Trade Commission is very used to balancing so maybe in contrast to some of these other areas that we're talking about on this panel today privacy is not something where if you didn't have Title II classification you wouldn't have any enforcement the Federal Trade Commission has been an aggressive privacy enforcer an aggressive cop on the beat particularly in the last year and I'll specifically highlight hopefully it isn't getting too much in the weeds but the FTC has this very flexible and capacious regulatory authority and enforcement authority to regulate to enforce against unfair and deceptive trade practices now for 30 years of their privacy enforcement they've mostly focused on deception that's led to long privacy policies a real focus on notice and choice a real focus on transparency in a way that I think people are increasingly realizing is insufficient for a lot of entities but that's what they've been doing until last year when you really began to see the FTC leaning into its unfairness authority to bring enforcement actions against entities that perhaps regardless of what they're saying to the consumer are simply engaging in privacy invasive practices that are deemed unfair unfairness involves a careful balancing test around the injury to consumers the privacy injury to consumers and the ability to avoid that injury so all of these you know arguments about bias providers being uniquely situated in the marketplace even if you take them at face value take them as correct the unfairness authority that the FTC has gives the ability to account for those in a really fact specific way so they could absolutely look at a bias provider and find that the calculation of whether a privacy practice is unfair or not comes out differently than it might for a google or a facebook an ad network on the commercial web right so that there's all something that should give a lot of heart and a lot of hope to people who have maybe been skeptical of the FTC as an enforcer just looking at it in the last year they're also undergoing rulemaking this year which is very very good I don't want to say it's perfect the FTC still clearly lacks the resources the funding the capacity that it needs to really be a robust enforcer in this space they also could use more specific statutory authority I think if we're considering just general authority of federal agencies over the next 5-10 years to engage in rulemaking but they have a very capacious of flexible and adroit statutory authority as is if the FTC undergoes a similar process the only thing I'll say is under title 2 if they undergo privacy rulemaking again and they don't have to do they have to be committed to updating it the landscape changes very very quickly in 2016 when the rulemaking found that web browsing data ought to be treated as sensitive and subject to an opt-in consent regime that was a higher standard than most of the rest of the industry and that led to you know complaints from bias providers that they're being treated differently and so on but when you look back in it now from 2024 you would I think be very valid in looking at those 2016 privacy rules and saying you know I see a focus on notice and choice a sole focus on notice and choice I see an opt-in and an opt-out regime the rest of the world has caught up not only are we sort of slowly getting to an opt-in consent regime for the rest of the advertising industry as a result of the GDPR and other global frameworks but in a lot of ways we are beginning to exceed that through things like the FTC's unfairness authority and state laws and global laws that go beyond just opt-in and get to things like data minimization, use purpose limitation and other other harms associated with the use of data so conductor rulemaking you have to keep it up to date and then they'll be doing this kind of at the same time as the FTC is doing it for the rest of the world one thing I think we can say really clearly FPF's position clearly is we absolutely need a federal comprehensive privacy law in the United States that's a given one that would apply to any entity collecting personal information and you know the hope I think that such a comprehensive privacy law would supersede some of the existing sectoral frameworks like you know there are there are other sectoral rules that are frankly not as strong as what we could do today like the privacy rules under GLBA or the VPPA or can spam or kind of pick your sectoral set of regulations a comprehensive privacy law could supersede some of those it probably won't supersede all of them it's unlikely we're going to be replacing HIPAA any time soon right so anyway we're always going to have a little bit of sectoral regulations not necessarily a bad thing but we we absolutely need a comprehensive privacy law so if I could pick a thread from what you're saying it sounds like you know since our last attempt at broadband privacy rules sort of like the global climate for privacy has advanced there's an appetite for even stronger rules and you know there's this back and forth often over FCC versus FTC and you know it sounds like though arguably there's an option for a yes and approach of great we have an FTC focused on broader harms and we have an FCC with particular expertise that can use 222 to address a specific subset of you know items that the FTC may not be able to reach or as efficiently reach and now is the opportunity to go further than it did in 2015 absolutely yeah I think there's absolutely potential for either agency to go further than we did in 2015 it just the world was very different and it should be a work in progress if you look at for instance COPPA are leading quite strong federal privacy law protecting the information from children under 13 it's been updated a couple times is currently being updated now and also a law that was passed in 90s was then updated in 2013 era to keep up with the fact that mobile devices had become prevalence we needed to update these rules to account for things like geolocation data from mobile devices that's a good thing you need ongoing rulemaking authority to keep up with advances in both technology and law Kevin when you're talking a bit about innovation and choice in platforms for the creator community it's a very sort of traditional framing of how we've thought about net neutrality in the past it brought to mind the chairman there's discussion around the virtuous cycle the virtuous circle back in 2015 that openness begets innovation begets growth and you have this flywheel of new there's the saying that today's innovators will become tomorrow's incumbents one might say yesterday's innovators and instructors are today's incumbents but what we'd want it sounds like is an ongoing opportunity for that cycle to continue that you don't just have one big streaming platform one big video platform that you have the opportunity to provide you know platforms that address the needs of a diverse array of businesses and creators I mean so there's elements of that that I think are definitely true and historically we look back at earlier times in the the history of like recent so we used to talk about youtube or Spotify as the upstarts that we're going to or even Pandora as like these upstarts that we're going to help bring about a more democratized cultural ecosystem by getting folks around the historic legacy industry gatekeepers which sometimes are associated with older technologies like AM FM radio and there there are moments and instances where we can see that yes that's worked and we can also see on a fundamental level some of the same power dynamics replicating themselves on top of this new technology that there isn't something inherent about the internet that's democratizing on its own without having applying a consistent critique of centralized corporate power and so I think that you know I think the yes and framing is appropriate there that like it doesn't to observe that there are competition problems that emerge from a company like Netflix or Spotify or these large firms having too much power doesn't doesn't undercut the importance of having the net neutrality the title two piece taking care of it it actually emphasizes the importance of having a system and it's from our perspective I think the incumbent versus upstart narrative there's a it's a bit capitalist focused and that isn't necessarily how creative communities think about their practice especially if they're making work that isn't aiming at like mass cultural hegemony right like if you're if you're making niche oriented work the kinds of systems and structures and platforms that are going to work for you might look very different an example that I point to is the metropolitan opera has their own app it's awesome it's affordable it's got a huge library of very high quality streaming video of operas and it's making this body of work accessible to a broad audience what they need in terms of an economic model is going to be very different from the licensing terms that they would be able to get from mainstream streaming services but they've made the investment they've created a business model that works for them they're able to get philanthropic support for that and have successfully built this thing we lose that if suddenly their service gets degraded because they're not able to make the same kinds of deals that a Netflix can or an Apple TV can and understanding that yes speeds are getting faster some of these bandwidth concerns are changing well we don't know what's coming down the road in terms of 4K and 8K streaming or VR emerging technologies that are going to continue to be more bandwidth intensive as we look further further into the future so I think that the lesson there is not just to think about the potential for the small company now that is going to take over the world but to think about what is the optimal structure that can sustain a diversity of models in perpetuity like to create a cultural ecosystem that is not one size fits all that is able to elevate these large expensive things like the Met Opera app but also able to sustain in an economically viable way the work of creators who are making work that doesn't appeal to a lot of people who are focused on elevating a very specific community voice talking about issues that are relevant to particular geographic or cultural or identity based community and again that basic foundational piece of Title II is fundamental to that even as we work on the other suite of anti-monopoly work before other agencies yeah I think that's a really great way of thinking about is not just purely upstart income but just a level playing field for no matter how big you are to have access to subscribers and users and I was thinking about the early pandemic and again this has become such a lens through which we view this topic like so many others nowadays that as we were all trying to figure out how are we going to have events like this how are we going to have gatherings and this range of different tools people use to host events online so by and large we've kind of fallen on sort of like the zoom webinar style format for doing some of the stuff but I remember I attended an event where there was a sort of pixel art type 8-bit video game sort of screen and you had a character you moved around and depending on your proximity to other characters you could overhear the conversation participate in a small group or move around and there was a center stage where the sort of address to the entire room happened and it sounds kind of strange but it was actually kind of delightful and maybe it's not for everyone but for a particular type of audience and a particular type of community it would be a great tool and it would be a shame if that got you know didn't have non-discriminatory access to the network to provide that service on an even footing to create a space for something like that so I think if there's, I'll just check if there's anything particular anyone would like to come back to that's just sort of holding on to, if not we can open it up to questions from the audience both virtual and in person if folks are good we can open it up I mean just quickly on the issue of like resiliency we talked about that but I just wanted to emphasize that benefits of Title II there's a lot of other important things that applies to broadband providers it helps protecting customers from disconnections right now with people that have Title II regulated services if a provider wants to go out of business and stop serving these communities there's a process they have to issue a notice they have to have it for public comment there's opportunities to file opposition provider has to show that there's alternative reliable service but with Title I none of these things happen it's very little for example just two months ago this company called Bailey Cable when out of business without any notification to customers serving 12 ton or so in Mississippi and in another example in 2020 CWA and PK file a memo by AT&T with the commission showing that AT&T was instructing its technicians when they were trying to get out of specific areas and I unregulated DSL service broadband but they were specifically instructing their technicians to not touch regulated Title II services so if somebody had landline phone at home they were lucky but the other ones were not so this is something that's very important especially as we talk about communities that are left behind that do not have access to any providers or competitors both you and Angie have both provided examples of sort of magic that comes when you can call yourself a telephone service both from a business perspective what it gives you access to and what protections you get as a consumer but it's really not about it being telephone versus something else it's about the framework that we use to think about that particular service and you know the last story I think to end on that sort of really drove home for me not to come back to the pandemic again but at the outset of this incredible you know epoch-shifting moment you had the government step in and say we're going to do something about rent and tenant invictions we're going to do something about mortgage payments student loans all these things we're going to step in and do something to make sure we're protecting folks as we're dealing with this mass disruption and we know that broadband is essential and the FCC couldn't step in and say no disconnections, no disruptions you know credit to the companies who stepped in and said yes we agree with this pledge to take care of folks but it was a promise it was a voluntary there was no enforcer who could step in and say we are stepping in on behalf of the American public and consumers and making sure they're protected in this moment and I think that kind of for me at least it really revealed the gulf that just this title one title two difference really represents so I think we'll throw it open for questions for the panel I think we have microphones if you raise our hand we'll have a microphone brought to you Hi, Andy Schwartzman from Benton Institute for Broadbanded Society thank you for doing this this is for Angie Kronenberg I have found historically one of the easiest ways to put an entire audience to sleep is to utter the phrase pole attachments but it is I think really important and underappreciated importance here I wonder if you can speak to pole attachments and how the impact of title two is and also its relationship to bead yeah so a lot of people do just frame that portion of the communications act is just about pole attachments but it's actually much broader than that which may all still put you to sleep because it's about access to the conduit well that's how we string fiber along in the public rights of way this is really important to really all network companies but in particular those who are entering the market they often times are relying upon fiber connectivity and to run fiber along the street you can either dig down into the get access to the conduit under the street or you can access the poles but when you drive along the road often times there are poles and those have telecommunications facilities electric and so fiber providers have to get access to that and right now fiber providers that only offer broadband service that aren't offering a voice service or that aren't offering a cable video service don't have rights to get non-discriminatory access to the conduit so what does that do it raises the cost of access and it makes the process longer and that is what's so important to encompasses members is that they have the same rights to the poles and to the conduit as the incumbent providers who've often been on those poles and in the conduit for decades now and so business is to have more choice of who their providers are we need to be ensuring that they have the same non-discriminatory access as the incumbents do and so that is why in Compass and we represent the competitive providers in this space really insist on the commission looking at this issue and dealing with it both in the old case where it's still pending at the FCC as well as the current NPRM that's pending at the FCC we think that in and of itself would be sufficient for reclassification but there are many other things that we've talked about on this panel of why it's also important for the FCC to have authority over broadband the ability to address issues of critical importance to the nation having a national framework with an agency that ultimately is responsible for ensuring that every consumer and business not only has access has affordable access, has competitive choice, we think is absolutely important and necessary without it we don't have a place to really go right now to say there's an issue here because the broadband services treat as the title one unregulated service and so we would love for the commission to move forward expeditiously so that they do have the authority to address these issues and reinstate the really important no blocking no throttling, no paid prioritization and the general conduct standard rule that also helps ensure that once consumers have affordable access to a broadband network they then can access anything online that's lawful and have choice in their communication services, their cloud communication services as well as so many other great content companies. You have more choice today for streaming in cloud than ever before but ensuring that that's not going to change in the U.S. and having a national framework with an agency who can address sometimes which can be very sticky issues like the one who had discussed about the service that was being provided by Verizon to the Santa Clara fire department you need an agency who can hear these individual cases and what's going on in the marketplace and address when it's appropriate. Great. Thank you. Yes, my name is Roger Coachetti and I'm an editorial contributor to the Hill newspaper on technology policy. My question and I'm sorry I arrived a few minutes late so if this was discussed at the beginning my apologies and you just briefly comment on it but I didn't hear much discussion about the Title II coverage for the wireless providers of broadband internet access services and Pew research reports that about 50% of everyone who has wire line access to the internet also has wireless access to the internet and 20% of all internet users have no wire line access whatsoever so if Title II is applicable to wire line but not wireless internet service providers don't we distort the market and leave consumers sort of sitting there and I'm sure that many of us have gone for whole days I know I have when I've never used my wire line internet service I've just used wireless on top of this the satellite the new generation of low earth orbit satellite providers project that they will capture 10% of all internet access service and in some jurisdictions rural states that they'll have over 50% so are we heading in the current apologies if we've already discussed this but in the current scheme of things are we heading towards a situation where a wire line internet service provider with 10% of the market is regulated under Title II and the wireless providers satellite and cellular with 90% of the market are not regulated under Title II the commission's current and PRM proposes to regulate all of the technologies that are offering broadband internet access service the same so they will all have to comply with the net neutrality rules satellite as well as mobile wireless as well as wire line connectivity I think this is one of the sort of progressions in the history of net neutrality where I think in 2010 initially there was an approach to treat the two differently and since 2015 the approach has been parry to treat them similarly in fact the numbers you highlighted I think underscore the fact that it's not a secondary service a complimentary service especially with the expansion of I think what folks are calling fixed wireless service the ability to use 5G to get at home over the wireless communication systems I think it's important to note that the commission doesn't look at some of the rules the general context standard being one of them right specific to the technology so let's say for instance mobile or fixed wireless technology has certain limitations in the way that they may be managing their traffic is based on the technology limitations there's an opportunity for the commission under its proposal to look specifically at whether or not that's primarily driven by the technical versus business reasons right and we think it is really really important that the commission apply the rules across the board but that they also take into account the technology differences and that it be primarily driven by technical decisions versus business decisions thank you do we have any online questions thanks I can I can offer thanks for the panel discussion very interesting so let me offer one of the questions from online can you share any insights from other regions that have implemented alternative regulatory approaches to title 2 and if so any lessons you'd like to highlight that can be drawn from those and I'll also offer one other as folks are chewing on that can you discuss any potential unintended consequences or drawbacks associated with title 2 regulatory authority that policy makers should consider so I thought I'd throw both out for the panel to consider I'll take a first stab at that second question so you know I think the unintended consequence that we're thinking about is you know leaving any loopholes that would result in something like being treated as well maybe a certain application of 5G should be treated separately and create an incentive or unintentionally a loophole to move as much as possible into an unregulated space and so one of the things that we've been advocating in this proceeding is making sure that broadband is broadband there's yet to be a case made for any particular you know technology or service that needs to have special treatment and exemption from the non-discriminatory rules under title 2 so I want to make sure speaking for OTI one of our concerns is making sure that that sort of fair level treatment applies across everything we think of as the internet and then encompass we also represent competitive small broadband providers we've spent a significant amount of time in our comments discussing which sections of title 2 are really necessary and which ones the commission could for bear on and that we're encouraging them to for bear on or not to for bear on so there could be implications based upon what ultimately the FCC decides to do they largely propose to follow 2015 with some potential changes such as not for bearing on section 214 which we discussed a little bit about section 214 today would require if it were implemented fully would require that we seek authority to enter the market we don't think that's such a great idea we think we should be encouraging everyone to enter the market we shouldn't force them to go through a process by which the FCC would approve who can enter the market and who cannot we also think that they can study some of these issues on a case by case basis such as market exit we haven't had the experience where we've had a provider that's exited the market altogether but then again we see potential merger implications where providers may only be broadband providers who would be looking at those mergers would it only be the Department of Justice or would it also be the FCC so there are a number of things that need to be considered and then I think closely considered by the FCC as they're working on the order and taking into account the changes that have happened over the last number of years since we had a review of this issue in the 2015 order and then on international I've been thinking about this a little bit and one of the more esoteric aspects of the Title II net neutrality debate that's actually fairly fundamental I would argue is around what we call traffic exchange or interconnection which is how the interplay of the network you know above your ISP works where they connect to the wider network where those agreements that is the impact of the transit of data between providers so the case I would direct folks to South Korea where right now there is a debate happening in Europe to some extent in the US over you know should edge providers have to pay to send their data across the network and in South Korea there's been an implementation of this sort of sender pays model and it's kind of I would argue and other observers have argued has led to some change distortions it's led to some regulatory arbitrage where data is cashed to avoid triggering a payment requirement it's led to notably very recently Twitch withdrawing its service and we're no longer going to offer our service in South Korea because this particular regime is costing too much and so as consumers have to pay more and more for their services they should be asking what is driving up the costs of these services that I'm paying for is it actually the service I'm paying for or somewhere in the system are they being told and I'm paying for that toll in addition so something for folks to consider as we look to sort of what's happening outside of the US and the FCC and its impure does propose to look at those types of issues on a case by case basis so and then just like adding some more comments about the question that was asked like over regulation too much regulation is like a concern that's always raised by industry so I guess we're not always going to agree the you know the beauty of like doing a title too and using states as partners with the federal government in like ensuring service quality and things like that is for states that still like regulate telecom there's it might not exactly answer the question but there's like different levels of regulation they have there are like rules that apply to large I like there are mid-sized career requirements there are small provider rules that apply so there's a different levels of requirements that providers have to comply so the large I like may be required to restore service within 48 hours or pay a penalty for phone lines that are regulated but mid-sized provider might have you know more relaxed because there are things that could be you know discussed and negotiated and implemented in a way that is fair to encompass members and fair to the big providers great so if there's any closing thoughts folks would like to offer or let's stab at one of those questions by all means I know privacy is especially ripe for international unintended consequences it's really interesting in particular for CPI rules and privacy under section 222 because for lots of reasons I think one anytime you have different regimes like this you have the risk of fragmentation I guess in the regulatory landscape which can lead to legal uncertainty and potentially lower standards I think not too many people are perhaps terribly worried about bias providers being subject to higher privacy standards but we certainly don't want them subject to lower privacy standards than the rest of the world so fragmentation at any point can lead to some weird gaps and unintended consequences there's also if you perhaps a bit controversial but there is an economic impact to precluding advertising supported business models I think one of the things regulators are going to have to grapple with not just for bias providers but everyone in the next five years is the extent to which we want to permit kind of pay for privacy schemes across the board not just for bias providers but if your sole concern is just cost and access and affordability advertising impacts that in a major way and finally we haven't really touched on it today and it's perhaps not really an unintended consequence but a consequence is that section 22 rulemaking given the trajectory of the supreme court the makeup and the trajectory of the supreme court is likely to be undermined as a consequence of decisions around the major questions doctrine the Congressional Review Act potentially slash likely doing away with chevron deference if you look at some of the previous decisions that have upheld for instance the open internet order they rely pretty heavily on deference under the chevron doctrine to the agency's reasonable interpretation of how bias providers ought to be classified title one or title two so for rulemaking there is a bit of a threat of a kind of one to punch here which is that the reclassification may be subject to greater scrutiny or less deference and the classification is a precursor or a necessary condition for privacy rulemaking which would then itself be subject to greater scrutiny so perhaps a risk is that you end up with no rules at all for privacy but you've also precluded the FTC from being an aggressive privacy enforcer and you don't necessarily need rulemaking to do enforcement but right so that's a potential regulatory we can definitely do an entire dive on the nuances of the FTC exception and their ability to continue regulating carriers in their non-common carriage activities and the future of the regulatory state this is a particularly fascinating area to apply that question because of the fact that it is one of the policy areas it's kind of undergirded the application of Chevron in the last 23 years so with that note though I think hopefully you've all heard something new along with something old as you've thought about titled to the cliche is that it's easy to miss the forest for the trees and in this case I hope by spending a little bit of time on a few trees it's kind of filled in your concept of the forest a little bit better one other thing I wanted to note which I think is important I think someone said at the beginning maybe consumer perspective on net neutrality isn't as important as it once was but I do think it's I would just kindly disagree with that consumers do still want a national framework of net neutrality policy whether you're protected or not shouldn't depend upon which state you live in or that you're doing business in and the most recent net neutrality survey that we have seen is that 72% of consumers no matter their party affiliation right really want a national framework of net neutrality policy and so I think it is important for all of us to note that that this is still an important part of the conversation of what consumers feel like that they need and we shouldn't get so caught up in what's going to happen post net neutrality that we don't have a recognition that the net neutrality policy itself is really important to ensuring that consumers can obtain the access to all the lawful content that's available on the internet without their ISPs interfering with the ability to do that once they've chosen an ISP right that's how they access their content and so I would just really want all of us to appreciate you're working on this proceeding that there is still a great desire by consumers to have that national framework and that the FCC should move forward and go to order on it that's a great concluding note and with that I think thank you all for joining us today thank you panelists for joining us and providing this conversation thank you