What gets me is that some provider who pays simple access to a NAP or POP in some far away location – let's say San Jose – gets access to me in Alexandria, VA. And they don't have to worry about any of the research or risk it took to wire me up. They pay once (or relatively little in re value) and then get to “fly” to some highly desirable / valuable locations (like my zip) with little additional investment or risk. What a deal!

I don't advocate an access charge regime like with POTs, but one should have sympathy and some understanding for those that are doing some heavy lifting here at the last mile. You don't have a network without that risk.

I know some Cato types oppose even food and aeronautical safety regulation, and I'm not read to go down that rabbit hole.

What's “competitive enough”? Maybe an HHI of less than 3000? But there needs to be a time factor, as well. A market may be very concentrated but still subject to competitive entry, Schumpetarian or otherwise, if the current actors get too cocky. And again, many sectors of last mile bb are very competitive (in urban cores).

The fact that line-drawing is hard doesn't mean that, in life and in law, you don't need to draw lines sometimes. I'd rather we picked a bright line rule than a balancing kind of test to determine what's the market concentration point that triggers regulation, because in my view the advantages of hard-and-fast rules outweigh the occasional unjust results.

Part of my belief in NN also comes from my prediction that fiber to the home is the end of the line for the foreseeable future, for communications infrastructure built to the home. Intermodal competition is a historical fluke. There is nothing on the horizon technologically that can compete with fiber. Not satellite, not wireless. (Maybe docsis 3.0, but that's a likely fiber substitute–I think we'll not see docsis 3 and fiber in the same market for a while)

I support net neutrality in the last mile because I think that broadband access in the home is not competitive, and as fiber rolls out the natural monopoly tendencies are going to become ever more pronounced. I have a choice of two broadband providers, and I'm lucky. Some people only have one.

I'm talking only about last-mile stuff here. No one that I know of has ever called for the regulation of the core network, which is highly competitive.

You may disagree how and if natural monopolies should be regulated, and even if they exist (e.g. you may believe, as I don't, that wireless is a viable competitor to fiber in the relevant ways), but that's my basis for believing in NN. Laying fiber to houses is like laying sewers. (And yes, overbuilding in some areas will lessen the need for regulation in those areas.)

But Google has only lock-in, no real natural monopoly. Consumers will jump ship if something better comes along, and along with that the fear of a Google death sentence. It's just totally different.

What gets me is that some provider who pays simple access to a NAP or POP in some far away location – let's say San Jose – gets access to me in Alexandria, VA. And they don't have to worry about any of the research or risk it took to wire me up. They pay once (or relatively little in re value) and then get to “fly” to some highly desirable / valuable locations (like my zip) with little additional investment or risk. What a deal!

I don't advocate an access charge regime like with POTs, but one should have sympathy and some understanding for those that are doing some heavy lifting here at the last mile. You don't have a network without that risk.

I know some Cato types oppose even food and aeronautical safety regulation, and I'm not read to go down that rabbit hole.

What's “competitive enough”? Maybe an HHI of less than 3000? But there needs to be a time factor, as well. A market may be very concentrated but still subject to competitive entry, Schumpetarian or otherwise, if the current actors get too cocky. And again, many sectors of last mile bb are very competitive (in urban cores).

The fact that line-drawing is hard doesn't mean that, in life and in law, you don't need to draw lines sometimes. I'd rather we picked a bright line rule than a balancing kind of test to determine what's the market concentration point that triggers regulation, because in my view the advantages of hard-and-fast rules outweigh the occasional unjust results.

Part of my belief in NN also comes from my prediction that fiber to the home is the end of the line for the foreseeable future, for communications infrastructure built to the home. Intermodal competition is a historical fluke. There is nothing on the horizon technologically that can compete with fiber. Not satellite, not wireless. (Maybe docsis 3.0, but that's a likely fiber substitute–I think we'll not see docsis 3 and fiber in the same market for a while)

I support net neutrality in the last mile because I think that broadband access in the home is not competitive, and as fiber rolls out the natural monopoly tendencies are going to become ever more pronounced. I have a choice of two broadband providers, and I'm lucky. Some people only have one.

I'm talking only about last-mile stuff here. No one that I know of has ever called for the regulation of the core network, which is highly competitive.

You may disagree how and if natural monopolies should be regulated, and even if they exist (e.g. you may believe, as I don't, that wireless is a viable competitor to fiber in the relevant ways), but that's my basis for believing in NN. Laying fiber to houses is like laying sewers. (And yes, overbuilding in some areas will lessen the need for regulation in those areas.)

But Google has only lock-in, no real natural monopoly. Consumers will jump ship if something better comes along, and along with that the fear of a Google death sentence. It's just totally different.

Americans for Tax Reform has been discussing this issue recently; this is a particularly interesting piece.

I wish I had more time to look into, and write about, this important issue. Thanks again for your coverage.

Regulations represent the commons into which one can easily litter without fear of having to internalize those costs. Smart people, being who they are, think that they can always stay ahead of the slippery slope. It rarely comes to pass. Exceptions, loopholes, new mandates continue almost unabated – the CFR grows like a weed.

Detente demands that the regulators stop, too.