Last week, succumbing to pressure from the White House and campaigning by media outlets and online communities, the Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 to classify broadband Internet service providers (ISP) as “Common Carrier” entities under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934.
It’s worth noting that in this instance, the FCC followed public opinion. U.S. executive agencies often open for public comment before adopting policies. During this period, 99 percent of the record-breaking 800,000 submissions were in support of the decision, according to the Sunlight Foundation. Even when considering the sampling bias that most who submitted comments were motivated by campaigns also in support of it, like after comedian John Oliver’s speech that inspired users to comment on the page so many times it crashed. The FCC will now regard these providers similarly to other common carriers like telephone, radio, television, water, in-home gas and power providers. Supporters of the decision hailed it as a major step forward for the idea of “net neutrality,” that all pages on the internet should be equally accessible by the Internet user, regardless of its content (excluding illegal activities).
So a site publishing content critical of the ISP should be as equally accessible as one publishing content in support of it, and a site that is a supporter of the ISP should be accessed just as easily as one who lobbies against the interests of the ISP.
Net neutrality is a good thing. Even major opponents of this decision agree. Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and AT&T all released statements criticizing the FCC decision, yet supporting the idea of an open web. You might ask, how this is possible?
Take the example of web development and the “browser wars.” At one point, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer dominated the market and was able to dictate which web technologies would succeed. Progress halted. However, today, Internet Explorer is no longer on the throne and the Web is becoming standards-based driven through the collaboration of the market with the W3 Consortium, which is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web.
Was it government regulation that solved the monopoly and stagnation of Internet Explorer? No, it was the developers in the market who recognized a problem and created competitor projects like Firefox, Konqueror, Opera, Safari and Chrome.
During the antitrust law case, United States v. Microsoft Corporation in 1998, a group of 240 economists wrote an open letter to President Bill Clinton urging the federal government to value the power of the market over legal regulation. Among the group who signed the letter were four economists from NC State. The U.S. Department of Justice did not side with them, but their argument is compelling.
The same applies to ISPs. The high startup cost for infrastructure, especially in remote areas, leads to scenarios where areas may only have one or two ISP choices because it requires a large amount of existing capital to fund the up-front costs and low initial profit. Over time, new and more competitive players may enter and replace less competitive ones, like what we have seen with the Google Fiber service. Clearly, it wasn’t government regulation that reduced prices and increased service speed in areas where Google Fiber has been deployed.
Although the decision changed FCC policy, it did not change the law, as only Congress, not the FCC, can enact legislation.
I disagree with the reclassification because besides being a large change for an unelected executive agency to make, it applies an 80-year-old policy to what is very much a 21st century industry that could not have been foreseen by the policy’s original authors, and on which a huge part of the world economy is now based.
Neutrality is driven by opposing ideas having the power to rise to visibility and the competition among those who broadcast them. This FCC decision furthers neither of those. Some would say it actually makes competition harder. Imagine only having one choice of home electricity provider. No matter how badly that company behaved, for example, dumping ash into a river, it would still remain in business because there would be no one else for consumers to turn to.
