Cohen Invites ACA Members to 'Steal' Comcast's Work for Internet Essentials, Eyes Title X
Comcast Chief Diversity Officer David Cohen has an offer for American Cable Association members, he said in Q&A following FCC Chairman Ajit Pai (see 1803210053): Any cable operator that wants to "steal" elements of the company's low-cost broadband program for the poor can do so. "We’ve offered to whitelist any and all of this intellectual property and work with anyone in the industry," he said of Internet Essentials. The program began 5-1/2 years ago and serves about 1 million families.
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Cohen also sought net neutrality legislation to "end the game of regulatory Ping Pong," indicating his company might be open to no paid prioritization as long as it could do specialized services. A spokeswoman noted he wasn't making any formal or final proposals.
Other cable operators could perhaps use Comcast's IE call center "at cost," Cohen said. "If you wanted to stand up a program like Internet Essentials, we’d be happy to save you all the investment we’ve put in" on the back end, and "you can steal our marketing materials, whatever you want to use for the name, we’ll give you our website," he said. Moderator Bob Gessner, ACA chairman and MCTV president, said that "I imagine you’ll have some people who are interested in learning more." Other companies haven't taken Cohen up on his IE offer, which he has made before, a Comcast spokeswoman said.
Recognizing Pai for rolling back Communications Act Title II net neutrality rules, Cohen said a top priority for 2018 should be to "convince Congress to do that which it was elected to do, that is to legislate and put in place a durable, fair and rational regulatory scheme for broadband" that some have called Title X. There could be no blocking, throttling or unreasonable discrimination, there would be full transparency, and specialized services as defined by then-FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski would be OK, Cohen said: "We’ve all gotten hung up a little bit on the concept of paid prioritization" though no ISP seems to be doing it. "There’s a broad consensus around what appropriate net neutrality rules are," he said, seeking bipartisan, "durable" open internet rules "so that we can stop worrying about this issue." Specialized services could include "broadband providers’ existing facilities-based VoIP and Internet Protocol-video offerings," said paragraph 112 of the 2010 net neutrality order under Genachowski.
Cohen's point was that "there is even a way to work out the paid prioritization issue -- with a ban on paid prioritization but an authorization of specialized services as generally the Genachowski Order did," the spokeswoman emailed. "He believes this is something that smart people who want to legislate -- as opposed to playing politics -- could negotiate and work out. He wasn’t proposing language or definitive solutions -- just principles and a suggested approach." The spokeswoman noted that the 2015 net neutrality order under then-Chairman Tom Wheeler "renamed 'specialized services' as non-BIAS [broadband internet access service] data services that are exempt from the Open Internet rules."
Also at ACA Wednesday, Comcast's user interface took heat: 803210039.