Your Cable Television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. On this weeks the communicators, a discussion on the upcoming vote on repealing Net Neutrality regulation. Fcc wasst member of the a guest on this program. Here is what he had to say about Net Neutrality. What this document proposes to do that i will be voting for december 14 is return the internet to the exact same Regulatory Framework that 2015ned the internet from and the 20 years that preceded it. We saw massive investment, consumers protected and a free and open internet. Believe in a free and open internet, but the question is, what is the right Regulatory Framework to ensure that . I think the document we will be voting on puts us back on the right framework. Were at the fcc when Net Neutrality was debated. What do you think about this . Gigi i think he is engaging in revisionist history. Number one, it directly its broadband. It takes broadband oversight out of the fcc entirely and gives it to the federal trade commission, which does not have as strong pools. That is number one. Number two, it illuminates the rules against Internet Service providers like comcast and at t blocking, throttling internet traffic, and allowing for what is called fast lanes. Charging online providers to get to the consumer faster and at better quality. Thirdly, this is really important, it preempts or prohibits the state from protecting consumers and competition with similar rules. This is a very radical departure from 20 years of both republican chairs saying fcc we think the fcc has the authority to protect consumers and competition, and we think we should do something about it. I disagree with commissioner carrs revisionist history. Host during your tenure at the fcc, why did you feel it was necessary to have title to two for the internet . The d. C. Ceased court of appeals overturned the chairmans rules, he had Net Neutrality rules grounded in title i. They were pretty strong, i did not agree with all of them, that they were pretty strong. When i was at a nonprofit, he supported the fcc in court. But the court said, i am sorry, you cannot have these strong rules under title i of the communications act. In order to have strong rules, and had to be grounded in title ii feud thats why we went title ii. Thats why we went to title ii. We did not apply all of title ii to broadband access, we did not provisions 30 of 47 because we did not think it was in the Public Interest. Former republican commissioner of the sec fcc, what is your view . To be its always great on. Happy holidays to everyone. I think it is important to talk about history. There is a lot being written about this debate, thank you for this opportunity for us to go into the facts and history and what does it mean for consumers and entrepreneurs. A lot of articles out there are being written that are purely click bait, that it is armageddon. To the fine Net Neutrality as maximum Internet Freedom for consumers and entrepreneurs, really the debate is over which federal statute that already exists is the best to do that to protect consumers. When you look at how the internet started in the mid1990s, up into the title ii order in 2015, 1. 4 trillion invested in broadband infrastructure in that period alone. There are at least three federal statutes that protect consumers and entrepreneurs and they are very powerful. They are the sherman act, the clayton act and the federal trade commission act. There are also state protections. The order says it preempts the states from being miniature secs and trying to miniature regulate trying to this, but it does not prevent them from suing providers if they harm consumers. Plus, there are the trial lawyers that can bring classaction lawsuits to Service Providers if they breach the terms of service or contracts with consumers. Those three powerful federal statutes at least, was a bunch of state actions have provided since the beginning of the internet, a strong and powerful disincentive to act in an anticompetitive way that harms consumers. On top of that, you have a more competitive, robust broadband market. Broadband has been going mobile for many years. Over 90 of u. S. Consumers have mobilee of four broadband providers. That is a key element here. Mobile broadband has faster speeds today than cable did back when this discussion was starting to ramp up. That is a threat to cable, were seeing more fragmented common content feud im looking more fragmented content. I am looking at my kids, they are looking at ondemand type video. Were trying to figure that out. There are more tencent vertical integration, at t attending to buy time warner. These are defensive maneuvers because the internet marketplace is disrupting the incumbents. It means you have more households moving toward mobile. You saw last monday, cyber monday, really become mobile monday, half of all of the purchases made work on mobile devices, more than half of u. S. Households are wireless only. This is very good news for consumers. Put the order will do is preserve consumer protection, protection for all to numerous, and allow more certainty for the investment, over 300 billion will be needed in the next 10 years to build out fifthgeneration Wireless Networks that will have one gigahertz of speed, six times faster than 4g. Billionn jobs than 500 Economic Activity that should come from that. You can have a winwinwin environment like it was before title ii was enacted. We can talk about the analyst who said there was uncertainty as a result, we can talk about the downturn in Capital Expenditures to find rock band networks. Im sure gigi will refuted and it will be good. I am glad im here with gigi, this debate needs less heat and more light. Have lost newmont nuance and fact and im delighted we have this time. Gigi if i could shed some light and fact. Lets talk about the federal trade commission. As i talked about before and robert confirmed, with the chairman is string to do is give over all oversight for broadband to the federal trade commission. I find that remarkable. The started in 1934 1934 and itted in was told by congress that your job is to oversee networks. Cable networks, telephone networks. This fcc is saying we dont want have oversight to access the most Important Network of our lifetime. I find that remarkable. Why does the federal trade Commission Fall short . A number of reasons. Number one, no Rulemaking Authority and rules are important. Before itnt harm happens, ok . That is number one. Itser two, the fcc sees authority is very narrow. Meaning if an Internet Service provider lies and says im not going to block or throttle, i am not going to have fast lanes and goes ahead and does that, then it will go after the Internet Service provider. It is not going to do anything if, for example, lets say comcast doubles its prices one day. The fcc cannot do anything about it. What if an isp blocks content it does not like . The fcc can do nothing about it. This isortantly, and something that gets lost, there is a case pending in california, the ninth Circuit Court of i dontat would want to get into the weeds, but the cases out there, it was brought by at t. Even if the chairman and his , the secs reclassify would not have authority over broadband is at t with this case. It is still pending in the court. Let me talk about competition if i might. Pai put out his own numbers about who has Broadband Internet access come at the speed the fcc considers Broadband Internet access. 50 of all census blocks have a choice of zero or one Internet Access provider. 87 have a choice of one or less. When you mentioned when you measure by census block, if one person has broadband, everyone has broadband. So the numbers are even worse. No one really knows what the numbers are. That is not competition. Mobile is great, and maybe one day 5g will provide speeds that considers broadband but today it does not do that. Robert first of all, the ftc can intervene if speech is being blocked, the department of justice can. You have the sherman act, the federal trade commission act, it is broad and nimble. Fund a lawsuitto or higher expensive lawyers. The ftc is a 13 Million Agency with 640 lawyers and economists. They look for trends and bottlenecks and they are at giant Public Interest law firm, essentially. The parade of horribles to come out from the title ii proponents could be cured by the antitrust law. In the first six years of the obama administration, we did not see a Net Neutrality complaint brought to fruition or an antitrust complaint brought to fruition. What was broken that you were trying to fix with title ii . There were those forces, and the states out there, it was a very powerful deterrent. There were handfuls of incidents she might cite that were resolved before the title to i order. Title i an antitrust case takes years to come to fruition. In fact, there is a Supreme Court president that makes it harder for the public to bring these kind of cases. Antitrust gets in the competition. Lets say you are a startup and you cant afford to go in the fast lane. Your investors are saying, we are not going to invest in you unless you can get in the fast lane somehow, and must unless people continue. You dont have a way to wait for an antitrust case to get through the courts. You will be dead meat. This is what rules are important, they moderate bad behavior, let consumers know what their rights are and protect consumers and competition before they are hard. Before they are hurt. Obert lets go to the premise what it does is nimble and cycle. Action three of the clayton does what you said, which is lessening competition. The ftc and department of justice can act quickly. It did not because the claims did not come for, we do not have systemic rocket failure. Thats one thing that was lacking in the 2015 order. Were talking about before the fact regulation. To have to go to the ftc present your case, can i do this . Can i affect the marketplace . , certainhad a product video would not count against your data cap. The ftc gave it a green light, then they decided they were not sure they wanted this. It was very popular. Tmobile said, if you meet these technical parameters, you are compressing your video in such a way, it will not count against consumer data caps. In the meantime, the mother may i, there was an interruption and how this could happen for months and months. It was a long time. Also caught in a contagion internationally, three Internet Services in india, and we are not in india i realize, but you cannot offer free Internet Service to mother teresas poorest of the poor because it violates these convictions. Thats when it becomes unworkable. Markets and analysts in the people that have to fund the 3 million to fund 5g, a say they are going to do it slowly as at all, there is lots of records about these operations the service role areas, 80 of members have been told by their local banks they would not get money or as much money they needed to build the network. That is really the main reason the chairman is doing what he is doing. Gigi ill get to investment in a second, but i need to talk about mother may i, no blocking, no throttling, no fast lane. That is prohibited. There is no mother may i. No, it is not. You can read your talking points, but there is evidence. That is number one. Number two, we left zero rating im not sure it was the best idea on second thought. Zero rating is not about free data. Zero rating is about favoring Certain Applications and saying they do not apply to the data cap. We have a problem with at t favoring its directv content and saying the data cap does not apply. I want to ask a general question, if video does not get applied to the data cap, why have a data cap in the first place . It is there to create scarcity so you can favor your own content. Zero rating,r there were a lot of calls to do so. We did not do it just to make sure we could allow new zero rating models to happen. Some, like tmobile, was fine. , andwe were about to say ran out of time, was not ok. Let me talk about investment, i think that is really important. People have to see and listen to what the isps say to wall street and not to washington, d. C. Not one publicly traded isp told its investors or securities and Exchange Commission that title to harm its investment. Exact opposite. The ceo of charter, the ceo of , itast, have said title ii is the more utility like, stronger regulation, if you can give me a minute, i have to read something from charters blog. Just from last week. Experienceomers may speed upgrades as of us which had been flipped, it is made possible by our ongoing investment in infrastructure technology. That allows us to serve our customers every day. Charter has invested more than 21 billion in these critical areas. They are investing, and that is what they tell wall street. All, capital of expenditures has fallen about 18 in wireless in the past two years. That is at a crucial time we need to build up 5g. That is a Global Competitiveness issue. We had 4g thanks to strong by carson bipartisan efforts, but the world is going to beat us on 5g if were not careful. Data caps, lets talk about it. They are gone because of competition in wireless. It is now kind of a moot point. Gigi and why are you worried about zero rating . Robert you gave it i gave it as an example of mother may i. Though out and read your contract, thats what i tell my friends. Gigi [laughter] robert you have some vertical integration. Verizon buying aol and yahoo , at t with the directv. All of those are isps that have content, and there are others. Even if the licensing content, reselling other people, they have an incentive to sugar show theirthis content on this. They want their customers to be watching it whether they are Wireless Company or not. Universalast has content, they dont want Verizon Wireless throttling or blocking their content. At the same time, at t does not want another company blocking their content. A formsps, it is almost of mutual assured destruction. Thene starts throttling competition, it will start a war. Killed, they get will kill big revenue screens streams. It is logical for them to not throttle or blockage of this content because of vertical integration. This does not get discussed in any of the new stories. There is more market pressure keeping markets open. Not what you are discussing is both the federal Communications Commission and the department of justice and this administration and the Previous Administration found that vertically integrated carriers have the incentive and ability to discriminate. So when charter bought time warner, when at t bought directv , and now at t is attempting to buy time warner entertainment, now being blocked by the justice department. All three times, the record has shown the government has been concerned there is the incentive and ability by these vertically integrated operators to favor their content. All the records of the murders that have happened, the big mergers of the past several years. Approved. Was gigi that is unfortunate. Robert it was the president who appointed you to the fcc. There might be a spot open and the fcc, that is what i hear. Maybe gigi is a candidate. Host what are the arguments the republican side one of the arguments the republican side has made about this, that this is a problem looking for a solution. There have been no throttles or Net Neutrality case to justify title ii. Admits there have been cases at t and verizon blocked google wallet, netflix was being throttled by comcast and verizon. There are examples. Have there been dozens . No, best because until now, fcc opens have believed in internet, even though there was disagreement about whether it should be a policy statement or rules, under title i or title ii. This is the first time anybody has said, no rules, no policy, no authority whatsoever. Service providers were on their best behavior. I will to you one thing. If this thing goes through, which i expected to next week, within six months, or whenever the litigation is over, comcast, at t and others will start charging online providers for faster service, better quality of service, what i call fast lane. It will happen. The proposal that the chairman put out talks a lot about innovative, new Business Models the isps want to do, this is what he is talking about. He is talking about fast lanes, twosided markets. Hes talking about fast lanes. This is what Internet Service providers have wanted to do since 2005, when the head at t said, im not going to allow the companies to ride over my pipes for free. One by one, the companies are admitting this is what they want to do, so that is what people should expect. Mcdowell, asioner gigi said, without the government and strict rules, we have isps the siding who can be online deciding who can be online. Robert there are strict rules, as i said at the outset. There are three strong federal statutes. There are three strong federal agencies, 50 states with attorneys general, plaintiff attorneys all over the place. There are so many legal arrows. Gigi i think you need to read the proposal. Robert i did read the proposal. If they are acting in a deceptive way gigi deceptive. Robert there are a ton of arrows to protect consumers. Speaking of revisionist history. Re are plenty of rules out there before what happened. Washis internet dystopia going to happen, why did not happen before the title to order ii orderg title came along . How to greatest get there before we