Taking net access
As it becomes more difficult to imagine drafting a network neutrality legislative command that will be both meaningful and easily enforceable, it becomes easier to imagine a wholly different kind of legislative action: enforced separation.
In 1992 a FERC Order (No. 636, known generally as the Open Access Order) made pipeline unbundling a requirement, mandating that pipelines separate transportation from the services they offer. Order 636 meant that the transport pipelines could no longer engage in gas sales or sell any product as a bundled service. Thus, no advantages in terms of (among other things) the timing of gas transportation could be afforded by a pipeline to its affiliates. This set of actions has had generally beneficial effects on gas customers.
It was expensive to achieve: FERC recognized that pipeline companies would incur costs as a result of complying with Order 636, and allowed them to charge customers for them. The initial plan was to allow pipeline companies to charge exit fees and surcharges to recover 100 percent of their “prudently incurred” transition costs; later, FERC issued Order 636-A on August 3, 1992, which required pipeline companies to recover 10 percent of these transition costs through the rates they charged for gas transportation. (Note — these are transition costs, not “what we could have gotten if we could have soaked everyone for every dime” costs.)
It is true that having the FCC work on such a “prudently incurred” cost-assessment regime would take a great deal of time and would be heavily regulatory. But the cost might serve a higher public value — access to the internet-as-ocean.
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5 Responses to “Taking net access”
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I find your blog very interesting and useful.
However, lately I've seen that your site has some funny characteristic: e.g. with this post, the text doesn't wrap for miles! It forces me (whether with Firefox or IE) to scroll horizontally two screen widths or more to read the text. It is a problem one sees sometimes (used to see frequently) on the ICANN site, in the message boards. Maybe you've caught something there.
Interestingly, the page that comes with comments wraps normally.
Hello — the wide page happened because of my excitement about the 7 foot long onewebday banner. Posting that picture wrecked the page. When the banner slips below the fold, the page will go back to normal. Sorry about the width. It's a big banner.
Susan
FERC covers a non speech content, namely energy while ISPs like the cable companies are First Amendment speakers according to even the Intermediate O'Brien scrutiny of Turner I and Turner II.
its good that it does.
Order taking service