Dear Chariman Pai,

The Internet is a wild and wonderful thing which you have the challenging job of regulating.

The stakeholders are many including consumer, access, transit, content, finance, privacy, and security. Finding a balance between these will be a challenge.

You are given a regulatory structure based on Title II from the last administration.  This was the best compromise the previous chairman could come up with given his political inclinations and understanding of the issue.

Only two things have changed since then.  The first is the administration, and clearly from your statements, the inclination.  The other is that Title II is in place, which gives you the opportunity to look and see where it works and doesn't.

Assuming you are going to stop and think and do the best job you know how to do, then the problem is still how to balance the access needs of a growing Internet technology incubator with the realities of what is needed to satisfy the finance community funding a world class comunications network.  From all appearances, doing an honest of job of this will be difficult given the lobying efforts of the stakeholders.  I trust that you will do what you think is right.




As for specifics, since the FCC is in the communications business, I think what is needed from the FCC are clear rules defining how the communications part of the internet should work. This means defining what internet service is (and is not) and how the major players should interconnect and operate.  I believe that having the legal authority to do this requires either new legislation or keeping some form of Title II around.

Questions that are crying for rules include:
What does buying internet access give the end user in terms of bitrate transported to where?
Should the network be legal content blind or able to monetize content transported? 
Should the network be able to use or modify information transported?
How does transit fit into access?
How does content delivery fit into access?
How should municipal broadband fit into access?



Funding a world class network is expensive.  This could mean that it is necessary to allow service providers to use their positon for unlimited access to every revenue stream possible.  It could also mean that service providers operate within predictable,  clearly define limits.  Considering the crazy stuff going on in the access market today, it may be that a stable, defined access market is the best way to fund the problem.  To figure this out, you would have to look to the finance community, not the carriers.  I suspect the answer is that both models will work.


Thank you for your time and good luck with your puzzle,

Stuart Venters