Yesterday afternoon, USTelecom filed reply comments addressing the Federal Communications Commission’s proceeding on broadband industry practices. Specifically, our comments oppose “network neutrality, €? the political term of art for what amounts to unprecedented regulation of the Internet and the network operators who provide Internet service.

Although people are familiar with the benefits of the Internet for things like e-mail, entertainment, and shopping, high-speed access opens a well of new options. Saving time and fuel by telecommuting, cutting health care bills with telemedicine, providing educational opportunities through distance learning: these things and many more are possible with broadband.

Our comments send a strong warning to the would-be regulators: for Americans to realize broadband’s potential, service providers must have the flexibility to adapt their networks to the demands of content and services that require high-speed, high-quality transmission. Just as innovation has put more intelligence into toasters, washing machines and cars to provide better service, so networks must be more intelligent to manage the steep €”and inevitable €”growth in traffic that will occur as more and more people take advantage of broadband’s potential to improve the quality of their lives.
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Today, the Federal Trade Commission’s Internet Access Task Force issued its report titled “Broadband Connectively Competition Policy. €? The report can be found in its entirety here.

The report is an exhaustive summary of the debate over whether we should regulate the Internet by an agency whose mission is protecting competition and maximizing consumer welfare. One major contribution of the report is that it brings economic analysis to bear on the debate.

There are a couple major points to the report. First, after two days of public hearings and countless pages of comments, there is still no evidence of “market failure or demonstrated harm €? to consumers. In the land of hypothetical harms, what need is there for real world rules?

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“More bandwidth than you can use? €? reads a headline in the May 30 issue of Business Week. “Impossible €? is my short answer.

Speaking as the head of policy for USTelecom, I chuckled at the part in the article where it questioned whether consumers would ever need 100Mbps of bandwidth! Kind of reminds me of that old Bill Gates quote about no one ever needing a PC with more than 640 KB of RAM. I wonder how many times Mr. Gates has reflected on that comment and smiled to himself.

But as you read further, the article makes strong arguments in favor of juiced-up pipes €” citing consumers need for speed as HDTV, online gaming, and video phone calls turn most U.S. households into bandwidth hogs. No argument there.

The article then cites some of the future apps associated with broadband like remotely turning on and off lights and appliances. True, but what about the good stuff?

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