Sonia Arrison

Net Neutrality Shopping Is Bad for the Economy

Shopping is normally good for the economy, but not when the shoppers are net neutrality advocates looking for friendly deals on a regulatory forum. Policy makers in Michigan, their current target, should tell pro-regulatory activists to go home, with good reason.

Those who support net neutrality legislation frame themselves as proponents of the Net, but in reality their recommendations would have an anti-Internet effect. The worry is that network providers like AT&T or Comcast will start charging some Web sites more than others. It is true that network providers would like to charge high-traffic Web sites for their larger usage of the network, but it remains unclear why that would be wrong or unfair.

Voip.com, an Internet phone provider, is one of the corporations calling for government intervention. Without government oversight, it argues, “consumer-friendly applications like VoIP, online gaming, and streaming homegrown video would likely be squeezed out by the larger corporations that can afford to pay for unfettered service.”

It’s obvious that Voip.com is simply trying to avoid the risk of paying more for their network use, but the thing Voip.com’s executives have missed is that the Net is getting crowded. If network operators can’t recoup their costs for the higher bandwidth use, then the network will slow down for everyone and services like VoIP, online gaming, and streaming video won’t work so well anymore.

Read more here.

December 11, 2006 | Comments |

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    I'm not sure I ever thought of it that way; in fact, I'm not sure I do now.

    One thing I can't help but think is that the non-stop ads I see on TV these days talking about how "net neutrality is designed to stuff more cash in those rich Silicon Valley pockets" are just evidence that Comcast and Verizon learned how to do advertising by watching political campaign ads.
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    That is a good way to frame the "net neutrality" debate and one that isn't raised often among all the hypothetical scenarios predicitng the end of the internet without net neutrality regulations.

    I can't speak to the MI bill, but I have been following the national debate in my work with the Hands Off the Internet coalition and the federal regulations would prohibit the prioritization of VOIP, video, and gaming packets over a spam email packet. We are already seeing problems with VOIP calls being dropped and poor reception due to overcrowded network and net legislation regulating the internet in the name of net neutrality certainly wouldn't resolve this problem.

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