The column below appeared today in The USA Today, as an opposing view to a USA Today editorial.
Opposing view on ‘Net neutrality’: Providers back Web freedom
By Kyle McSlarrow
On Tuesday, a federal court struck down a Federal Communications Commission order enforcing a rule that the agency hadn’t ever actually adopted. The court’s decision does not call into question an Internet policy adopted unanimously by the FCC in 2005 — endorsed by all broadband providers — promoting a free and open Internet. Thus, the decision has no effect on the Internet experience that consumers enjoy, and it doesn’t alter the government’s existing authorities to protect consumers or to police anti-competitive conduct.
Today, 65% of American households subscribe to services provided by a number of competing broadband companies to access a growing number of exciting applications that have changed the way we all communicate, conduct business, gather news and information and consume entertainment.
But there are still gaps. Not every community has broadband, and not every household that has access subscribes. Here, too, nothing in this week’s court decision affects our collective ability to implement the vision of a connected nation.
Broadband providers agree that consumers should have the freedom to navigate the Internet and access any legal content or application of their choice. That isn’t at issue. But fears of what broadband providers “could” do have prompted the usual and predictable calls for more — and, in some instances, incredibly far-reaching — government regulation of a marketplace that has been an American success story.
Why? In precisely two instances — and one of them is debatable — out of trillions of transactions over the past decade, has anyone even been able to point to a specific problem. Contrast that with the overwhelming evidence of hundreds of billions of investment to build and expand networks and the incredible array of new applications and sites flourishing because of a bipartisan policy of regulatory restraint.
We fully intend to work with the FCC and other policymakers to preserve the open Internet that is a reality today. But it is a massive overreaction to suggest that we should impose decades-old regulatory regimes designed for the days of Ma Bell and a government-sanctioned monopoly on the Internet.