Net Neutrality Backers Fight Imaginary Battle, Critics Say
Net neutrality debaters need to separate fantasy from fact, Internet interests agreed Tues. during a Pike & Fischer summit panel. Amazon.com Vp-Global Public Policy Paul Misener was odd man out, championing net neutrality language as needed in Telecom Act revisions Congress is weighing.
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Broadband pipeline owners indicate they want to control, or as they say, “prioritize,” some online content, Misener said. So his firm and other content providers are fighting “to preserve the longstanding openness of the Internet,” he said. Today’s model, which has increased Internet access speed, innovation and benefits to consumers, needs legislative protection, he said.
Network operators make money on consumers and content providers, Misener said. They'll also make money on new services they introduce “under longstanding nondiscrimination rules,” he said. Extracting “rent” from content providers no doubt would aid broadband deployment if the money went back into the network, but there’s no guarantee operators won’t spend it elsewhere, he said.
Despite its huge impact, broadband is evolving, Progress & Freedom Foundation (PFF) Senior Fellow Thomas Lenard said. No on knows what business models will emerge, but common carrier-type rules like net neutrality could “severely inhibit business models with potentially catastrophic results,” he said. Public utility-style regulation on the Internet would quash incentive to invest, Lenard said.
Web watchers can look to other distribution businesses for hints of broadband’s future, Lenard said, adding that some see as discriminatory arrangements are commonplace. Revenue from an unfettered Internet may have to go to cover the costs of content and pipeline build-out, he said. Some models will require bundling with content, another commonplace in the distribution business, he said, citing Bell Canada’s recent VoIP partnership with Clearwire.
Many gripes made by Misener and ilk are moot, since they are hypothetical, Lenard said. U.S. Internet Industry Assn. Pres. Dave McClure said net neutrality backers raise “an issue that doesn’t exist,” calling them morally and technologically dishonest. “We're spinning ourselves in circles and wasting valuable time in a very limited congressional session,” he said: “Why are we dealing with the technical equivalent of monsters under the bed?”
The net neutrality debate resembles hit ABC series Lost, AT&T Senior Vp-Regulatory Planning & Policy Dorothy Attwood said. Both thrive on a swirl of theory, clues and falsehoods, she said. And no one knows the outcome but “there’s a lot of entertainment value,” Attwood said.
Three cadres want a net neutrality law, McClure said. Most are content firms seeking to “game the system” or lawyers and activists who “grew up hating Ma Bell,” he said: “For them, this is the last opportunity not to become irrelevant,” since the U.S. is “marching steadfastly” toward a deregulated telecom regime. When that happens, those who've profited on “Bell bashing” will need “real jobs,” McClure said: “That’s a frightening prospect.” The 3rd faction is “people who believe that Elvis is still alive and in alien abductions,” he added.
The only “real” net neutrality issue is whether the U.S. returns to the “bad, good old days where we keep the telecom industry squarely under the thumb of the federal government,” McClure said. The question is, will consumers or regulators run the broadband market, he said. McClure, admittedly sick of the topic, urged passage of a law mandating that anyone who uses the phrase “net neutrality” be “beaten, tarred, feathered and driven outside the Beltway.”