'Competify' Campaign Aims for Net Neutrality Approach, if not Numbers
Somewhat the way the FCC was flooded with public comments regarding net neutrality, a collection of communications companies, trade organizations and advocacy groups is hoping to get similar public support -- if not the volume -- as they lobby regarding a variety of broadband-centric matters before the FCC. "You don't have to get net neutrality-type numbers," said Harold Feld, senior vice president at Public Knowledge, one of the participants in a new campaign, dubbed "Competify." "If you have a large number of customers … file saying, 'There's not a lot of competition,' that’s something a chairman of the FCC can point to to say 'Look, I'm not making this up.'"
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The parties behind Competify -- the Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users Committee, the Broadband Coalition, BT, the Competitive Carriers Association, Comptel, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, Engine, Level 3, Public Knowledge, Sprint and XO -- have met a number of times with the FCC to address such issues as the IP transition and special access rates. Their joint Competify campaign and website launched Monday with a full-page advertisement in The New York Times promoting it. The website is the centerpiece of a public-facing campaign aimed at driving consumers to contact the FCC about what it claims is price gouging in the broadband market.
Despite the market-opening provisions in the Telecom Act, "We aren't seeing competition on the ground," said Colleen Boothby, a Levine Blaszak communications lawyer and counsel for the Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users Committee. Ever since 1999, when the FCC deregulated special access pricing, "We've been screaming and yelling ... the prices can't go up in a deregulated area unless there's inadequate competition," she said. While the FCC was unwilling for years to look at special access pricing issues -- the “commission was hoping a market would be competitive enough they could stop regulating it," Boothby said -- the increased evidence and testimony about market competitiveness problems "has reached a tipping point," she said.
Whether an effort like Competify is effective "depends on a number of variables such as: what’s the likelihood the substance of the initiative would be adopted by the FCC anyway?" said former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, now a partner at Wiley Rein. "How well organized is the campaign? What are its message and tactics? Who’s behind it, really? Does it have any intellectual depth to its advocacy? Some campaigns have been quite successful, such as the change in the broadcast indecency rules in the wake of the infamous Janet Jackson ‘wardrobe malfunction.’ Others have only given the appearance of success, such as those surrounding net neutrality even though the creation of a new regulatory regime would have happened to some degree even if there had been no organized public affairs campaign." The FCC rarely gets hit with lots of grassroots emails "unless there is a well-funded and professional effort to produce that kind of advocacy," McDowell said.
Coalitions like Competify "can definitely increase the effectiveness of companies and groups without big DC operations," emailed analyst Paul Gallant of Guggenheim Partners. "And sometimes there’s a real clarity to one-time coalitions that helps them cut through the noise and get traction with policymakers.”
While Competify doesn't expect to cause the millions of comments net neutrality received, any public input "must in some way inform the commission's decisions," said Joe Cavender, Level 3 assistant general counsel-federal affairs. "If I was at the commission, I'd be interested to know people are weighing in."