Aspen – A growing tension between companies that provide Internet content and services and companies that control the phone and cable lines into millions of American homes surfaced here Monday.
Communications and media industry leaders and dozens of policy wonks and lawmakers gathered at the annual Aspen Summit to debate the future of the Internet.
On one side were phone companies like SBC and cable companies like Comcast, which have been boosted by recent federal decisions that allow them to keep certain competitors off their high-speed data networks.
On the other side are companies like Vonage, which provides Internet phone service, and content providers, such as television networks, that worry that the free-wheeling Internet will become a pay-only marketplace controlled by phone and cable providers.
“We don’t want to have blockages where people control our access to consumers,” said Fritz Attaway, a lobbyist for the Motion Picture Association of America.
Vonage chief executive Jeffrey Citron said Monday that his company has already launched legal battles against three network providers who have blocked Vonage’s Internet phone service because it competes with their own Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, offerings.
“Those who say there is not a … problem, please take your head out of the sand,” said Citron, uncomfortably sandwiched onto a panel Monday morning among executives from SBC, Verizon and the National Cable Television Association.
But Forrest Miller, SBC’s top public-policy strategist, countered.
“How are you going to justify $4 billion worth of investment if (our network) is a commons?” he asked. “We don’t intend to block people’s access to Internet service. It would be against our business interest and invite more regulators.”
SBC is planning to spend $4 billion over the next three years to run fiber-optic lines to 18 million American households. It wants to use its new fiber-optic lines to become a video provider just like Comcast or DirecTV. But it wants to be sure that companies like MSNBC, which create content, can’t stream that content to SBC customers without paying SBC.
All the companies agreed in principle with the Federal Communications Commission’s recent declaration of “net neutrality,” which states that consumers should be able to go wherever and do whatever they want on the Internet.
But the devil is in the details. After the conference, which ends today, lawmakers will return to Washington, D.C., to hammer out legislation that will replace the outdated 1996 Telecommunications Act.
Vonage has gone from zero to three lobbyists this year, Citron said, and is spending more now on legal costs than on research and development.
Alan Davidson, who became Google’s top Washington lobbyist in June, was also pressing the flesh in Aspen.
He says restricting the freedom of the Internet would hamper Google and other Internet innovators.
Staff writer Ross Wehner can be reached at 303-820-1503 or rwehner@denverpost.com.
