Posted on February 28, 2015 by Onan Coca — 0 Comments
After
casting a futile vote against the FCC’s plan to regulate the Internet
as a public utility, Republican Commissioner Ajit Pai delivered a
blistering attack on the new rules.
In his dissenting statement, Pai advanced three main objections to the Commission’s “Open Internet Order:” (RELATED: The Top 10 Failures of FCC Title II Utility Regulation)
1.
The Internet has grown rapidly, creating untold economic benefits,
largely because the government has refrained from interfering with it.
“For
twenty years, there’s been a bipartisan consensus in favor of a free
and open Internet … [and] the results speak for themselves. Dating back
to the Clinton Administration, every FCC Chairman—Republican and
Democrat—has let the Internet grow free from utility-style regulation.”
“But
today, the FCC abandons those policies. It reclassifies broadband
Internet access service as a Title II telecommunications service. It
seizes unilateral authority to regulate Internet conduct, to direct
where Internet service providers (ISPs) make their investments, and to
determine
what service plans will be available to the American public.”
“This
is … a radical departure from the bipartisan, market-oriented policies
that have served us so well for the last two decades.” (RELATED: Net Neutrality Bait and Switch to Title II)
2.
Title II regulations attempt to solve problems that don’t exist with
enough consistency to address with federal government regulation.
Everyone seems to site Verizon’s nasty spat with Netflix here. The story goes that Verizon throttled Netflix’ streaming speeds until Netflix paid a ransom,
thus Net Neutrality is necessary to protect hapless consumers and poor,
little old Internet companies like Netflix (the folks at The Washington
Post actually went so far as to make this connection directly).
No one mentions that Verizon took an absolute shellacking in the court of public opinion and clever consumers found a solution to the throttling that literally takes five minutes to fix — in
short, the free market and free Internet largely prevailed on its own
(as both are apt to do). Needless to say, far and few between are
government regulations that are cheap and take five minutes to enact and
don’t cause 10 more unintended problems in their wake (are there any?).
Here’s what Pai had to say:
“So
the FCC is abandoning a 20-year-old, bipartisan framework for keeping
the Internet free and open in favor of Great Depression-era legislation
designed to regulate Ma Bell. But at least we’re getting something in
return, right? Wrong. The Internet is not broken. There is no problem
for the government to solve.”
“Nevertheless, the Order ominously
claims that ‘[t]hreats to Internet openness remain today.’ It argues
that broadband providers ‘hold all the tools necessary to deceive
consumers, degrade content, or disfavor the content that they don’t
like,’ and it asserts that the FCC continues ‘to hear concerns about
other broadband provider practices involving blocking or degrading
third-party applications.’”
“The evidence of these continuing
threats? There is none; it’s all anecdote, hypothesis, and hysteria. A
small ISP in North Carolina allegedly blocked VoIP calls a decade ago.
Comcast capped BitTorrent traffic to ease upload congestion eight years
ago. Apple introduced Facetime over Wi-Fi first, cellular networks
later. Examples this picayune and stale aren’t enough to tell a coherent
story about net neutrality. The bogeyman never had it so easy.”
3. Title II regulations will lead to new taxes and slower broadband speeds for consumers.
“Literally
nothing in this Order will promote competition among ISPs. To the
contrary, reclassifying broadband will drive competitors out of
business. Monopoly rules designed for the monopoly era will inevitably
move us in the direction of a monopoly. If you liked the Ma Bell
monopoly in the 20th century, you’ll love Pa Broadband in the 21st.”
“One
avenue for higher bills is the new taxes and fees that will be applied
to broadband. If you look at your phone bill, you’ll see a ‘Universal
Service Fee,’ or something like it. These fees—what most Americans would
call taxes—are paid by Americans on their telephone service.”
“Consumers
haven’t had to pay these taxes on their broadband bills because
broadband has never before been a Title II service. But now it is. And
so the Order explicitly opens the door to billions of dollars
in new taxes. Indeed, it repeatedly states that it is only deferring a
decision on new broadband taxes—not prohibiting them.”
“These Internet regulations will work another serious harm on consumers. Their broadband speeds will be slower.”
“The
record is replete with evidence that Title II regulations will slow
investment and innovation in broadband networks. Remember: Broadband
networks don’t have to be built. Capital doesn’t have to be invested
here. Risks don’t have to be taken. The more difficult the FCC makes the
business case for deployment, the less likely it is that broadband
providers big and small will connect Americans with digital
opportunities.”
“The Old World offers a cautionary tale here.
Compare the broadband market in the United States to that in Europe,
where broadband is generally regulated as a public utility. Today, 82
percent of Americans have access to 25 Mbps broadband speeds. In Europe,
that figure is only 54 percent. Moreover, in the United States, average
mobile broadband speeds are 30% faster than they are in Western
Europe.”
