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INTERNET-2010/11/15 1 THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION INTERNET GOVERNANCE AND REGULATION: WHAT SHOULD BE GOVERNMENT’S ROLE? Washington, D.C. Monday, November 15, 2010 PARTICIPANTS: Moderator: DARRELL WEST Vice President and Director of Governance Studies Director, Center for Technology Innovation The Brookings Institution Keynote Address: DAVID COHEN Executive Vice President Comcast Corporation Panelists: ERIK GARR Partner Diamond Management and Technology Consultants GARY EPSTEIN General Counsel Aspen International Digital Economic Accords IDEA) Project * * * * * ANDERSON COURT REPORTING 706 Duke Street, Suite 100 Alexandria, VA 22314 Phone (703) 519-7180 Fax (703) 519-7190 INTERNET-2010/11/15 2 P R O C E E D I N G S MR. WEST: Good afternoon. I’m Darrell West, vice president of governance studies and director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution. And I’d like to welcome you to our forum on “Internet Governance and Regulation: What Should be the Government’s Role?” Broadband plays a powerful role in commerce, communications, and entertainment. It is a vital part of job creation, innovation, and long-term economic development. Virtually no part of our lives is unaffected by the digital revolution. But in recent years there have been controversies over who should run the Internet. FCC Chief Julius Genachowski came to Brookings a year ago to proclaim his support for net neutrality and an open Internet. And I know that speech was big when there were 1,500 news stories about it the next day. Since there have been lots of new developments. The FCC put out its National Broadband Plan. Advocacy groups have taken out full page newspaper ads calling for speedy action one way or another. There have been court cases involving the role of Internet service providers. So it’s obvious that opinions and emotions run very strongly in this area. People are worried about what the future Internet will look like and whether it will retain the same features that we have had over the last two decades. So people who say that Americans are apathetic about government clearly don’t follow the technology and telecommunications areas. And of course, all that was before the midterm elections. With the large Republican gains in the November elections, all of us are wondering how our national leaders will address these issues and the broader subject of Internet governance. What should be the relationship between the public and private ANDERSON COURT REPORTING 706 Duke Street, Suite 100 Alexandria, VA 22314 Phone (703) 519-7180 Fax (703) 519-7190 INTERNET-2010/11/15 3 sectors? And what is the role of government in this area? To help us understand these issues, we are pleased to welcome several distinguished speakers. David Cohen is executive vice president of Comcast Corporation, one of America’s leading communications companies. He serves as senior counselor to the CEO and is responsible for corporate communications, government affairs, public affairs, and corporate administration. Before joining Comcast, David was chairman of Ballard, Sparrow, Andrews, and Ingersoll, a leading law firm. From 1992 to 1997, he was chief of staff to Mayor Edward Rendell of Philadelphia. David is a graduate of Swarthmore College and he holds a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Erik Garr is a partner with Diamond Technology and Management Consultants. That company was just sold last week to Pricewaterhouse. For the last two years Erik served as general manager of the FCC Omnibus Broadband Initiative, also known as the National Broadband Plan. And that report, of course, still stands as a signature achievement for the country in laying out a future vision of what needs to happen in this area. Our other speaker is going to be Gary Epstein. Gary is general counsel of the Aspen International Digital Economy Accords Project. Earlier in his career he was chief of the Common Carrier Bureau at the FCC. He founded and served as global head of Latham and Watkins communications practice. He did that for 25 years. In 2009, he became executive vice president of SkyTerra Communications, an advanced satellite company. That company was sold to Harbinger Capital this year. He also served a brief stint at the FCC last year as the digital television czar. The format that we’re going to follow this afternoon is as follows: David will start with a keynote address outlining his thoughts on Internet governance. Following ANDERSON COURT REPORTING 706 Duke Street, Suite 100 Alexandria, VA 22314 Phone (703) 519-7180 Fax (703) 519-7190 INTERNET-2010/11/15 4 that we will hear from Erik and Gary. So please join me in welcoming David Cohen to the Brookings Institution. (Applause) MR. COHEN: Thanks very much, Darrell, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Brookings. It’s a pleasure to be back here. And really a pleasure to be a part of this particular programming. Like most people in our industry, I’ve watched with admiration as Darrell launched the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings. And in the short time he’s been here I think he’s put Brookings back on the map as an important forum for discussing public policy and technology and the ways in which they intersect with each other. As Darrell has settled into Washington he’s probably learned for himself the old truism that there are three things that are impossible to find in this city. One is a cheap hotel room; two is a legal parking spot; and three is a unanimous opinion. Now, of course, unanimous opinions are hard to come by anywhere, and probably the last place you’d look for one is in the Internet policy space. A few years ago I might have even agreed that consensus is a long shot when it comes to the issue of managing broadband networks and what constitutes reasonable network management. But recent developments suggest that a consensus among reasonable stakeholders may in fact be possible. We’ve just been looking for it in all the wrong places. The courts, the FCC and the Congress, all valuable institutions filled with tremendously and conscientious people, but few of them, quite frankly, with the background necessary to work out consensus on what are essentially complicated technical issues. So over the years, lawyers and lobbyists have dominated the discussion on broadband policy, and I don’t think they’re generally paid for or trained to develop ANDERSON COURT REPORTING 706 Duke Street, Suite 100 Alexandria, VA 22314 Phone (703) 519-7180 Fax (703) 519-7190 INTERNET-2010/11/15 5 consensus. No offense to anyone here. I’m a lawyer so I think I’m allowed to say that. And I’ve done my share of politics in my life. But that kind of experience doesn’t make me or anybody else like me an authority on the Internet. The Internet is a miracle. Not of lobbying, not of politics, but of engineering. And this engineering is all the more miraculous for taking an immensely complex technology and making it accessible, even to those of us who don’t know a terabyte from a mosquito bite. We can enjoy the simplicity of using broadband Internet services because the complex challenges of delivering broadband are handled by the engineers who manage our networks reliably, securely, and fairly. Those engineers need to accommodate the growing bandwidth needs of nearly two billion Internet users around the globe and thousands of new applications. They need to meet the practical necessity of managing traffic flows 24/7 without raising allegations of unfairness. They need to handle all the wonderful new applications that demand extra bandwidth and extra technical attention, and at the same time cope with some not so wonderful innovations, including malicious ones that can harm millions of users. And they need to do all this working arm and arm with the businesspeople who need to figure out how to generate the capital necessary to pay for those networks to carry all that traffic. Every one of these challenges involves network management. They’re all incredibly difficult and nobody can claim to have all the answers. And that certainly includes Comcast. We’re immensely proud of our engineering and technical talent. We have a great new headquarters building in downtown Philadelphia and fully 12 stories of that space is dedicated to housing engineers and related technologists. Nearly 40 percent of our entire company consist of technical personnel. And I think that speaks volumes of how engineering-intensive our business is in the 21st century. In fact, in an increasing number of meetings we remarked that the company is now being run by the ANDERSON COURT REPORTING 706 Duke Street, Suite 100 Alexandria, VA 22314 Phone (703) 519-7180 Fax (703) 519-7190 INTERNET-2010/11/15 6 engineers. And I’ll let everyone here determine whether that’s a good or a bad thing. Our business is inescapably at the center of the acrimonious but widely misunderstood debate over net neutrality. Were you to walk out onto Mass Ave this afternoon and ask the first 10 people you see to define net neutrality, I couldn’t tell you what they’d all say but I’d bet you that you would get 10 different definitions. And that’s only because this is Northwest Washington where nobody likes to say I don’t know. I won’t add still yet another definition, but I can tell you that net neutrality is first and foremost an engineering issue. It’s not a political issue. To be more exact, it is a set of engineering issues that stem primarily from network management challenges.