Adam Bender

Network congestion is “a worry” in Japan, said Adam Peake in a panel at the F2C conference. Peake is an executive research fellow at the Center for Global Communications of the International University of Japan. Some U.S. net neutrality advocates argue that building network capacity would relieve ISP congestion woes. Japan has the world’s fastest, least expensive broadband, Peake said. But those benefits encourage users to “pump out a lot of traffic,” he said. About two-thirds of ISP backbone traffic is residential, he noted. Japan has implemented net neutrality principles similar to proposed FCC rules, but ISPs increasingly use packet-shaping to target P2P and manage traffic, he said.

A Google message of wireless openness “is going to take root and it’s going to be difficult to dislodge it,” Google Android Group Manager Rich Miner said at the Freedom to Connect conference. Android, the search firm’s upcoming open-source operating system, will give consumers a taste for openness and teach them to value it, Miner said. The trait will influence how they pick a wireless carrier, breaking down “walls of innovation erected by handset makers [and] carriers,” he said. The first Android devices ship later this year, he said. But a more critical issue for wireless may be access to spectrum, said Michael Calabrese, a New America Foundation director. The 700 MHz auction raised the barrier to wireless entry, with the “DSL duopoly” Verizon and AT&T taking the most spectrum, he said. Verizon’s “Any Devices, Any Apps” effort is promising, but the “jury is still out” on how open the network will be and how Verizon will price it, he said.

Bell Canada Enterprises got Canadian Radio-TV and Telecommunications Commission approval for its private equity buyout by the Ontario Teachers consortium, with conditions, Bell Canada said Friday. The deal “proposed to privatize the country’s largest communications company and included significant foreign interest,” said CRTC Chairman Konrad von Finckenstein. “Consistent with previous decisions, we have imposed conditions to address our concerns relating to corporate governance,” he said. “These conditions will ensure that control of BCE remains in Canadian hands once the transaction is completed.”

The FCC should stop cable companies from slowing video service ports to competing TV companies, Verizon said in a Wednesday petition. “The process to switch video providers is… cumbersome for consumers,” Verizon said. “Cable incumbents do not accept disconnect orders from the new provider; instead, they require the customer to contact them directly to cancel service after choosing a new video provider and to return equipment. This significantly complicates the process of switching video providers, thereby entrenching the cable incumbents’ dominant market position.”

An economic slowdown means opportunity for alternative phone companies, as well as curtains for some VoIP companies, industry officials said in interviews. Meanwhile, former Bell companies and other wireline incumbents dismissed notions that their businesses are vulnerable.

Wireline carriers sounded alarms over an FCC proposal to shrink the number porting shot clock for completing wireline- to-wireline and intermodal number requests to 48 hours from four days. MetroPCS and one state regulator said the time interval could be shorter still. The proposal is part of a further notice to an order mandating that carriers use four validation fields in porting requests.

The FCC hasn’t decided whether it will invite the MPAA or Hollywood studios to the Stanford hearing on network management, Chairman Kevin Martin said at a news conference Thursday. The groups have opposed neutrality regulation, saying it could make enforcing copyrights more difficult. But the action that spurred FCC concern about management practices, Comcast’s blocking of BitTorrent, “didn’t have anything to do with copyright or lawful content,” Martin said. “If it did, I think the commission has very clearly stated that all of our net neutrality principles protect lawful content.” Martin said he was unsure whether the FCC would hold a hearing after the one April 17 at Stanford. “We'll wait and see how the commission feels about the success” of that one, he said.

Formal net neutrality rules could stifle business deals that could change how the Internet is used, a former FCC chief economist told Wednesday’s Internet Video Policy Symposium. Google’s search engine and Apple’s iPhone in particular owe their ascendancy -- and pressure on rivals to improve products and services -- to regulators’ hands-off approach, said Tom Hazlett, director of the Information Economy Project at George Mason University. Panelists agreed that providers’ network management practices should be transparent, not kept secret, as Comcast did with its BitTorrent traffic-shaping policies.

The FCC would need to exercise tough enforcement on manufacturers if the commission chooses to promote unlicensed spectrum deployment, Association for Maximum Service TV President David Donovan told a Federal Communications Bar Association lunch Tuesday. Spectrum efficiency will depend on the devices, he said. Without enforcement, manufacturers could ignore interference concerns as they try to outdo rivals with more powerful devices, he said. Manufacturers must have incentive to build non-interfering devices for unlicensed spectrum, agreed WilmerHale lawyer Jonathan Neuchterlein. But enforcement could prove tricky, Donovan said. “The entity you hold responsible may not even be within our shores.”

USTelecom debuted a Web site on broadband policy and proclaiming the group “The Broadband Association.” The public shift from voice to broadband is simply “calling it what it is,” USTelecom President Walter McCormick said in an interview. “The future of communications is in broadband,” he said. The phrase “Broadband Association” helps identify USTelecom’s membership and reflects changes in the kinds of companies coming to trade shows and working on policy, he said. USTelecom recently recruited Japan broadband giant NTT as a member. And the entertainment industry is taking an increasing part at USTelecom conferences, McCormick said.