> Title II may even be what's necessary to upend a stagnated telecom market. But it's certainly not a good, modern regulatory infrastructure.
"Good" is subjective, and "modern" potentially just as subjective, and both are quite vague. What particularly are your problems with Title II in the specific use? Not "what are problems that conservatives associate with other regulations that have some temporal nexus to Title II", which you've provided an inordinate amount of unnecessary external references to, but what is the specific criticism of the thing actually under discussion in the specific context for which it is being discussed?
Referencing contemporaneous legislation is not unnecessary. Those regulations are written with the same sort of mindset as Title II. They include rate setting, petitioning agencies to make changes to rates or plant, internal cross subsidization (USF), etc, just like Title II.
Title II is going to make it a lot harder and a lot less profitable to be a telecommunications carrier. And while the knee-jerk reaction to that might be "good!" that's short-sighted. At the end of the day, we need investors to pour money into telecommunications infrastructure, which is very expensive. If you make that unprofitable, they'll spend their money on WhatsApp or Twitter or other things that are less regulated. And when that happens, who is going to build the pipes? Google?
> Referencing contemporaneous legislation is not unnecessary.
Its entirely unnecessary when there is no specific relationship drawn other than vague temporal associations and references to "mindset".
> They include rate setting, petitioning agencies to make changes to rates or plant, internal cross subsidization (USF), etc, just like Title II.
Title II does not require:
(1) The FCC to adopt rate-setting regulations, or
(2) The FCC to adopt regulations requiring petition to make changes to rates
Title II permits such regulations, and (barring forbearance) requires covered carriers to publish rates, including publishing advance notice of changes.
> Title II is going to make it a lot harder and a lot less profitable to be a telecommunications carrier.
Given that most of what Title II is permit the FCC to adopt certain kinds of regulations, and given that most of the exceptions to that that impose direct statutory rules are also expressly subject to forbearance, I don't think there is any real basis to saying anything about what "Title II" will or won't do in general terms, rather than in the context of a particular package of regulations that come along with a Title II determination. While you don't actually make any specific references to what specific source of this "a lot harder and a lot less profitable" is, everything you've referred to seems to suggest you are operating on the basis that you are assuming both that every "the Commission may issue regulations" in Title II will be exercised with the most onerous possible regulations, and that the Commission will choose not to exercise forbearance for every provisions subject to forbearance. This is out of line with pretty much everything Wheeler has suggested about Title II use, and everything everyone advocating Title II reclassification has suggested the FCC should do as part of that.
> Its entirely unnecessary when there is no specific relationship drawn other than vague temporal associations and references to "mindset".
These aren't vague associations, it's about taking the same approaches to solving problems. E.g. rate setting was a technique applied to everything from transportation to telecom, and is a part of Title II. In modern regulation, we avoid rate setting, because they are more distortionary than other approaches.
> Given that most of what Title II is permit the FCC to adopt certain kinds of regulations, and given that most of the exceptions to that that impose direct statutory rules are also expressly subject to forbearance, I don't think there is any real basis to saying anything about what "Title II" will or won't do in general terms, rather than in the context of a particular package of regulations that come along with a Title II determination.
Also, the FCC isn't entirely in the driver's seat. Reclassification will be a huge opportunity for consumer protection types to push for rate setting, and the FCC will have to defend why forebearance is appropriate.
> In particular, the FCC has built up a large amount of precedent restricting its own ability to forebear from applying regulations:
The article you posted neither claims nor supports that (the article's analysis is also a mess for other reasons, but addressing those would only be germane if you were citing it for the claims it makes.) The only thing that article actually says that relates to FCC "precedent" is repeating a bunch of things about how the FCC has handled forbearance petitions -- and nothing in that about the scope of forbearance powers, just procedural things about the petition process. Since forbearance concurrent with Title II classification isn't handling a forbearance petition, that procedural discussion is all completely irrelevant.
The only thing it says about restrictions on the FCC ability to forbear is referencing the statutory limitation on forbearance on Section 251(c) regarding certain obligations of incumbent local exchange carriers.
(The closest the article comes to your argument that the FCC has "built up a large amount of precedent restricting its own ability to forebear" is the simple and unsupported description that the FCC using forebearance in association with net neutrality would be using "unprecedented and undocumented authority to forbear willy-nilly", which -- even if it was accurate -- fails to support your point, because the absence of precedent isn't the presence of contrary precedent; its inaccurate because the authority to forbear from any regulation or provision of Title II, with a few specific restrictions, is quite well documented at 47 USC Sec. 160(a).)
> Reclassification will be a huge opportunity for consumer protection types to push for rate setting, and the FCC will have to defend why forebearance is appropriate.
Not for rate-setting, because Title II doesn't require rate setting even before considering any application of forbearance. Title II only requires rate publication.
It allows rate setting (specifically, it permits, either upon petition or on the Commission's own initiative, the Commission to engage in hearings on any rate notice change), but does not require it (even before considering any application of forbearance), so no forbearance is necessary for the Committee to decline to engage in rate setting, even for a service determined to be within the scope of Title II.
> At the end of the day, we need investors to pour money into telecommunications infrastructure, which is very expensive. If you make that unprofitable, they'll spend their money on WhatsApp or Twitter or other things that are less regulated. And when that happens, who is going to build the pipes? Google?
Maybe, if they find that market growth is limited by infrastructure. Though of course having the end providers get into the infrastructure business has some of the same problems that having infrastructure companies turn the pipes into selective tollways.
Ultimately, though, I'm not sure we want telecom infrastructure itself to be the place for economic profits (meant in the technical sense of the term). We've done a lot better by letting the innovation happen on the ends. Infrastructure should be boring, predictable, low-risk, modest but reliable reward.
"Good" is subjective, and "modern" potentially just as subjective, and both are quite vague. What particularly are your problems with Title II in the specific use? Not "what are problems that conservatives associate with other regulations that have some temporal nexus to Title II", which you've provided an inordinate amount of unnecessary external references to, but what is the specific criticism of the thing actually under discussion in the specific context for which it is being discussed?