Supporters of network neutrality regulation have been deploying a lot of apocalyptic rhetoric. For example, before yesterday’s Commerce committee vote on network neutrality regulation, Rep. Markey warned, “We’re about to break with the entire history of the Internet.” And in the same article, we learn that Rep. Eshoo thinks that “this walled garden approach that many network providers would like to create would fundamentally change the way the Internet works and undermine the power of the Net as a force of innovation and change.”
This is ridiculous. In the first place, the Internet is much bigger than the American broadband market, to say nothing of any one broadband ISP. Even if all of the major American telcos were to simultaneously cut American broadband users off from the Internet (which would obviously never happen), the rest of the world can perfectly well carry on operating the Internet without us, and we could pass network neutrality legislation at that point to force the telcos to re-connect us to the real Internet.
In the second place, it’s important to keep in mind the kind of network discrimination the telcos are likely to use. They’re not going to block users’ access to the Google website unless Google coughs up an access fee. That would be financial suicide. What they’re interested in doing is setting aside some of the new capacity they’re building to deliver their own services. For example, they might build a 25 Mbit fiber pipe into a consumer’s home, and reserve 20 Mbits of it for their own video applications. Now, I think that would suck. But it doesn’t “change the nature of the Internet,” any more than it changes the nature of the Internet when Comcast uses the bandwidth on its coax pipes to deliver video content to its cable subscribers. In this scenario, I’d still have 5 Mbits of “network neutral” access to the Internet. I could do everything on that pipe that I’m able to do today. So the issue isn’t about “the nature of the Internet.” It’s about whether Comcast has the right to decide how to use the infrastructure it deploys.
Finally, if anything, the apocalyptic scenarios run in the other direction. If Congress does nothing this year, they’ll have every opportunity to step in next year, or the year after, to stop any nightmare scenarios that might unfold. On the other hand, if network neutrality regulations are passed and they turn out to be a disaster, they’re unlikely to be repealed. Bad regulations are never repealed. Instead, they spawn endless litigation and “reform” proposals that are even more intrusive. Once we give the FCC authority to regulate the Internet, there’s no going back.
There’s no looming crisis here requiring Congressional intervention. If the pro-regulatory folks turn out to be right, we can always come back and have this debate again in a couple of years. But it’s extraordinarily premature to create a new regulatory framework for technologies that are barely off the ground.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
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