FTC’s Leibowitz Wonders Why More ISPs Don’t Meter Usage
CHICAGO -- FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said he’s puzzled why more U.S. ISPs don’t meter broadband usage, by charging for what subscribers consume as opposed to the current practice of sending monthly bills of similar amounts to each category of customers. The all-you-can-eat broadband model doesn’t make sense to him, and is unlike other services, he said during a Q-and-A at a Cable Show luncheon. FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said she understands those who oppose usage-based pricing, while acknowledging that a certain number of broadband users consume a disproportionate share of capacity.
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Aides to all FCC commissioners said their bosses supported a separate broadband deployment initiative unveiled Wednesday in Chicago by Chairman Julius Genachowski. (See separate story in this issue.) Leibowitz said the 5 to 7 percent of those who can’t get cable broadband might be able to be passed by systems selling the service, if those ISPs charged by how much bandwidth was consumed. “In some ways it’s sort of the greatest good for the greatest number of people,” he said of metering.
So far, net neutrality has amounted to “more rhetoric” than alleged violations, Leibowitz said. “I don’t understand why something like metering hasn’t taken off yet, because there is not a product in the world where you don’t pay for what you consume,” he also said. He cited “essential utilities” and noted that “you don’t pay $50 a month and you get to turn on every light you want.” For broadband providers to start charging based on consumption, “you have to give consumers notice,” Leibowitz said. “If you do this … it just seems to me to be a reasonable way to do business.”
Clyburn asked whether, “if you're placing more stress on the system, should that be paid for, should that be expected?” She didn’t answer her question. “It’s hard for me to ignore who is causing stress on the system and where those” payments “should be realized,” Clyburn said. Leibowitz earlier said cable broadband customers who use a lot of capacity leave less for their neighbor to use, if they're both online simultaneously.
For Genachowski, wider broadband adoption is “one of the key things he wants to accomplish before he leaves the commission,” his aide Sherrese Smith said on an earlier panel. “We challenge the cable industry to partner with us.” Clyburn hopes more companies follow the “lead” of Comcast in their own deployment efforts, by selling broadband service at lower rates, with subsidized devices, to those who are poor “to the extent they can,” said her aide Dave Grimaldi.
The Broadband Adoption Task Force “is really right on,” said Margaret McCarthy, aide to Commissioner Michael Copps. “Commissioner Copps has always said there has to be a lot of public-private partnering if we're really going to tackle this issue” of deployment, she added. “We know that [the] cost of taking service is one of the key barriers to people taking service in their homes.” Copps hopes for continued “building on the momentum” by Comcast and others, McCarthy said. Commissioner Robert McDowell also looks “very [much] forward to partnering with industry, as we have been doing,” his aide Angela Giancarlo said: To make Internet service “a compelling experience for the consumer” is important, and “consumers I think need to realize what they can do online,” with a “lot of education efforts that would help.”