Net Neutrality Goes to Washington
What is an IT executive to think about net neutrality? The internet is often compared to a highway, a common infrastructure available to all. The current debate revolves around how strong we’d like to make that analogy. While consumers and policy makers aren’t too conflicted, business leaders may see things in a number of different lights.
Public authorities ensure that everyone can roll along the highway at the same maximum speed without prejudice or harm to others, irrespective of what they’re carrying on board. Is the digital version truly the same kind of common carrier? Sometimes we accept that it’s worth paying a toll to get there a little faster. Not only that, but when there is a toll, it’s usually steeper for trucks. Isn’t it fair that those who make heavier use of the infrastructure pay a little more for it?
Without net neutrality dominant players – Amazon, YouTube, Netflix and so on – could buy a service delivery advantage. And in our Western free market system, aren’t we bound to respect that? Number two tries harder, so number one has to use its vantage at the top to keep the competition at bay. If you’re a manager in a position to buy that dominating access, well, that sounds like exactly what you should be doing, regulations permitting.
On the other hand, we’re all consumers, too, and for consumers net neutrality is pretty clearly a good thing. We get the most choice at the least cost. Another tenet of our free market is that the consumer gets to pick and choose from a range products. Consumers vote with their wallets for superior offerings, which then drive a company’s a success. Yet if the heavyweights can artificially dominate the market by buying their way to the front of the line, the barriers to entry are raised. That means fewer newer players so the market is more limited. And since the costs of getting into that “fast lane” naturally gets passed on to the consumer, we will pay for the privilege of restricting the market.
You could characterize the divide as between business and consumers, but the current debate revolves around the role of regulation, and the public policy perspective sees it from a different angle. President Obama has recommended that the FCC accord “Title II” protections to net neutrality; others propose that it be governed under “Section 706”. That is, Title II of the 1934 Communications Act, which would consider your ISP as a telecommunications service, basically a utility, instead of a (Title I) information service. This would accord them no right to discriminate between one kind of traffic in favor of another. Section 706(a) of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is much fuzzier. In a single paragraph it says the FCC may “in a manner consistent with the public interest, convenience, and necessity…” apply regulatory tools to “promote competition” and “remove barriers to infrastructure investment.” Whereas Title II lays out page after page of regulations, the text of Section 706 doesn’t refer to network traffic in any but the most oblique way. Yet many in Washington favor it for this reason. It gives the policy makers and regulators the power. Jesse Jackson, for instance, recommends it because he sees the potential to ensure that the underprivileged have the same access to broadband as the rest of us. The fact is that neither law was crafted with the internet in mind, so both are imperfect approaches; but Title II would provide the greatest certainty since the rules are laid out in detail and less likely to be subject to political whim.
The ideal of net neutrality may be served by either Title II or Section 706 but one makes the rules explicit while the other asks us to rely on the government’s judicious and equitable crafting and application of regulations. For business, it may make sense to prefer the looser environment implied by Section 706 in which to seek opportunity; and public interest advocates may feel it’s a good idea to place more power in the hands of legislators and regulators. But Title II is preferable for businesses, and consumers, who would rather make decisions in a clear and certain environment.
