Yesterday, Capitol Hill was the location of a lively discussion on the merits of the FCC’s proposal to regulate broadband networks in order to “preserve” the open Internet Americans already enjoy in the absence of significant government intervention.
While the debate continues across the country, the American Consumer Institute has compiled a collection of essays that explore the various negative consequences regulations would bring to this essential modern resource. These consequences range from diminished broadband investment to harmful results for consumers.
At the event, Hal Singer of Empiris compared “Net neutrality” regulations to the government mandating a one-size-fits-all approach to the airline industry, postal service or even your gym membership. Singer explained how each case led to higher prices and fewer choices for consumers.
Perhaps the most compelling answer was the one not given: During the audience Q&A, someone asked, “what market failure does Net neutrality purport to solve?” Across the board, the answer was none.
You can watch complete archived footage of the event, as well as an interview with Empiris’ Hal Singer and ACI’s Joseph Fuhr, below.
A research study ordered by the FCC has received a scathing appraisal by Phoenix Center Chief Economist George Ford. The study, prepared by Harvard’s Berkman Center for the Internet and Society, was commissioned by the FCC as an independent expert review of broadband deployment and usage throughout the world.
Dr. Ford could not hide his incredulity that the analysis used to support the study’s heavily pro-regulation conclusion is “embarrassingly bad.” From overlooking the role of government subsidies in other countries to virtually ignoring the primary role of private investment in U.S. broadband deployment, the study appears to take a highly selective view of the global broadband landscape today. This has led many to question the reliability of the analysis in crafting a successful National Broadband Plan.
Hopefully, we all support the Commission’s goal of ‘data-driven’ policymaking. We also agree that the Commission should be mindful of lessons learned by other countries. There’s no question the FCC will closely review the Berkman Center study. Here’s hoping they also read this essential companion piece that puts its findings in perspective.
It’s not just governors who are questioning net neutrality rules proposed by the Federal Communications Commission. Here are just a few examples of what America’s newspapers are saying on their editorial pages:
Washington Post, 9/28/2009: Mr. Genachowski will “stifle further investments by ISPs with attempts to micromanage what has been a vibrant and well-functioning marketplace.”
Wall Street Journal, 9/22/2009: “Internet service providers manage their networks to give quality service to the greatest number of people, which is as it should be. If the Obama Administration really wants unfettered ‘competition, creativity and entrepreneurial activity,’ the best policy is to stay out of the way.”
Orange County Register, 9/27/2009: “More government control of the Internet isn’t neutral. It’s the nose under the tent everyone will come to regret, save perhaps those politically connected interests who manage to “game” the system.”
Tulsa World, 10/17/2009: “Now, however, the Federal Communications Commission is considering a proposal to impose federal regulations on the phone and cable companies that built and manage the network, a move that could discourage continued investment and might even slow the broadband boom.”
The Washington Times, 9/24/2009:“The administration should leave well enough alone. Red tape stifles innovation, and government regulators don’t have a clue what new inventions their regulations might destroy.”
These aren’t the only voices. In a column headlined “Hello Net Neutrality, Goodbye Internet”, ComputerWorld‘s Johna Till Johnson wrote: “Unfortunately, by imposing legislation designed to keep things that way, net neutrality proponents run a real risk of destroying the very Internet they want to protect.”
In a piece for the Financial Times titled “Net Neutrality at a Crossroads,” Richard Epstein, a distinguished law professor at the University of Chicago, wrote: “All in all, the presumption against state interference holds up. The explosive growth in broadband in the absence of net neutrality has continued to confound the doomsayers. But the old maxim, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, surely applies with special force to an FCC whose toolkit is filled with expensive, blunt, and broken instruments.”
Holman Jenkins of the Wall Street Journal wrote a piece titled “Neutering the Net” in which he stated: “The idea of broadband carriers nefariously blocking access to Web sites, for all its longevity, is perhaps the most talked-about, least-seen bogeyman in the history of bogeymen.”
David Nicklaus of St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote that: “New regulation could lead to the loss of “the very freedom that makes the Internet so successful and so valuable.”
Carnegie Mellon Computer Science Professor and “Grandfather of the Internet” Dave Farber, in an interview with the Washington Post, depicted Internet regulation as “attacking a problem which doesn’t seem to exist.”
Ryan Young of the Competitive Enterprise Institute wrote for the Examiner: “Neutrality regulations would channel innovation in unnatural directions. Companies will concentrate on regulatory compliance, when they should be working on customer compliance.”
And Adam Thierer and Berin Szoka of the Progress and Freedom Foundation wrote in a Forbes column headlined “The Day Internet Freedom Died” that: “Because of the steps being taken in Washington right now, real Internet Freedom–for all Internet operators and consumers, and for economic and speech rights alike–is about to start dying a death by a thousand regulatory cuts.”
It’s obvious that the FCC’s plan is flawed. We wonder how many more publications will need to weigh in before everyone gets the message.
In a recent blog post, James Pethokoukis, Money & Politics columnist and blogger for Reuters, warned about the negative effects that Net neutrality would have on the American economy, calling the move by the FCC towards Internet regulation “curious as well as wrongheaded.” Just as many others have warned of the law of unintended consequences, Pethokoukis writes, “The financial crisis that has convulsed the global economy for the past two years should be a potent reminder to communications regulators that the best of government intentions can create horrible, though unintended, consequences.”
Proponents of Regulation Face ‘High Bar’ Demonstrating Public Interest in U.S. Policy Reversal
Today, the Federal Communications Commission held its monthly public meeting in which it voted to proceed with a notice of proposed rulemaking “to preserve the free and open Internet.”
The following statement can be attributed to USTelecom President and CEO Walter B. McCormick Jr.:
“The nation’s broadband service providers fully support the notion of a free and open Internet. While we look forward to constructively participating in what the chairman promises to be a data-driven process, we simply point out the irrefutable fact that all Americans enjoy today a free and open Internet in the absence of more regulation. It is equally true that no industry invests more in the U.S. economy than broadband service providers. And, no segment of our economy created more jobs last year than the broadband-fueled information, communications and technology sector.
“All sides support an open Internet. All sides want to see continued investment, job creation and innovation in this vital sector of our economy. Where we differ is when it comes to whether a greater government role in the day-to-day operations of the Internet will help or hurt this important progress.
“We agree with several Commissioner’s comments that this rulemaking must look carefully across the entire Internet ecosystem, encompassing not only broadband providers, but also application and content providers. At the end of the day, ‘neutrality’ must, in fact, be neutral.
“Innovation—both within the network and on the edge—can and does coexist today with a free and open Internet. Those calling for greater government intervention face a high bar in demonstrating the public interest in reversing a course that has been so successful for consumers, our economy and our national security. We believe it would be a mistake to replace today’s open and dynamic environment with a government-managed ‘mother may I’ approach to innovation.”
Today is the day. The FCC is set to embrace a new regulatory regime over your Internet. Over the last few weeks an extraordinary number of voices have expressed concern over the presumed new rules that would apply additional regulations on top of existing FCC principles. A letter sent by 72 Democratic members of Congress, dozens of letters from Democratic and Republican governors, and don’t forget the two key union partners, CWA and the IBEW, sent separate letters voicing their concern. And you can now add suppliers to the growing number of organizations who are urging the FCC to proceed with great caution. Or more bluntly, telling the FCC NOT to get into the business of managing innovation and the Internet.
NextGenWeb is not a site that misses an opportunity. Supercomm 2009 presented us with a unique opportunity to hit the road and hear from all kinds of people on what they think about these proposed rules. We asked folks very simple questions like, “Should the FCC expand upon the existing FOUR principles that have protected an open Internet?” “Should they add new ones?” “Should they be applied to wireless technologies and applications?”
We mince no words on NextGenWeb when it comes to these questions. We believe in an open Internet, but also support the four existing principles already in place. Adding additional layers of government bureaucracy to a dynamic platform such as the Internet would be a mistake for several reasons.
The Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado recently held a conference on the rise of broadband video and the future of digital media. During the conference, a panel of experts discussed public policy implications for several broadband-related issues, including net neutrality. Fred von Lohmann, Senior Staff Attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, had some interesting remarks concerning the innovative framework of the Internet and the effects increased regulation could have on its future. Fred stated “I worry; in any highly innovative environment…regulators have no idea what they want it to look like…because it hasn’t been invented yet.”
In our digital age, we rarely stop to think of the people behind the innovative, and often life-changing, inventions driving the technology we know and love. Fortunately, the 2009 Nobel Prize awards for physics gave three visionary digital inventors their due.
In fact, if it weren’t for this year’s winners – Charles Kao, Willard Boyle and George Smith – we probably wouldn’t be meeting like this. Their work created the backbone for today’s broadband frenzy and one of the key killer apps that feed that frenzy.
Dr. Kao is cited “for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication.” In other words, he made fiber optics a realistic transmission medium. Without the ability to send vast quantities of bits and bites over these glass fibers with little distortion or energy consumption, we could not watch movies, transmit highly defined images or carry on video conversations over the Internet.
Dr. Boyle and Dr. Smith were trying to solve a communications problem at Bell Labs when they developed the charge-coupled device (CCD), an imaging semiconductor circuit. In layman’s terms, this allows a chip to store an image, and thus convert it into digital form. One result today is digital cameras, a technology that has driven Internet usage about as much as any other application.
The CCD lets us take digital pictures of our child’s first birthday, and fiber optics let us send it to all the relatives in mere seconds.
It is prizes such as this that remind us of the revolutionary nature of broadband. Twenty years ago, we couldn’t have imagined how much change this high-speed Internet technology would bring to our lives. From eliminating the long DMV lines to renew a driver’s license to robotic surgery by a specialist hundreds of miles away, this technology is transformative.
That’s why we are so committed to ensuring everyone has access to high-speed Internet service. But achieving this goal must be supported by public policy that continues to foster the significant private infrastructure investment of our nation’s broadband providers.
Broadband isn’t a luxury anymore. Wise inventors such as Dr. Kao, Dr. Boyle and Dr. Smith have given us wonderful tools through the mastery of their field of physics. So much has already been achieved with this technology, and no doubt there is still more to come. And thanks to the power of broadband, we can all reap the benefits of their invention.
This interview with Dave Farber (credit to KMB Video Journal) – widely regarded as the “Grandfather of the Internet” – is timely given all the buzz around FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s call for a greater government role in the Internet’s day-to-day operations.
Farber expresses concern around the potential impact on broadband-fueled innovation. He also worries that greater government intervention creates an environment of uncertainty that may make it difficult for technologists and engineers to innovate.
“It’s difficult to understand how you do technical design in the presence of hazy potential regulations. I can see myself and others in technical fields spending an inordinate amount of time wondering if a particular design will pass through the gates,” Farber said. “That’s the problem with these things. You end up really slowing down the ability of the network designers to protect the network and to give good services to subscribers, and that turns out to be potentially dangerous.”
Farber says that the Internet “blossomed” because in the 1990s the government made the wise decision to not inhibit the growth of “the goose that lays the golden egg.” He continues today to question whether government should really be in the business of managing such a dynamic platform for growth and innovation.
Farber concludes by saying that while business has the obligation to act in good-faith and continue to support the free and open Internet we all enjoy today, there is nothing to justify such a significant shift in the U.S. regulatory approach to the Internet.
…More thoughtful commentary on this high-stakes debate.
Is the world of online learning on par with classroom instruction? “Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning,” a report prepared by SRI International for the Department of Education, reveals just how effective broadband-powered education is proving to be.
Evaluating 99 studies that quantitatively compare online and classroom performance, SRI International found that, on average, students who did some or all of a course online ranked higher than those who did their schoolwork exclusively in the classroom. In particular though, blended instruction – combining online and face-to-face elements proved to be a stronger education method than pure classroom learning.
The effectiveness of online learning is in no small part due to the ever-evolving dynamism of broadband. After all, distance learning has come a long way from staid correspondence courses. With the arrival of online video and individualized online curriculums, online teaching has the potential to be more tailored and effective. And given young students’ interest in the Internet and attraction to multi-media, websites like Brightstorm and TeacherTube are not only appealing, they even manage to make learning cool.
Given the rapid rise of technology-based distance learning across the nation, it’s excellent news that online education can go the distance, enhancing knowledge no matter where you live via a simple broadband connection.
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