National Post (National Edition)
Net neutrality fiction
We live in an age that promises technological miracles, digital revolutions and radical economic transformation. Soon, electric autonomous vehicles will whoosh us through city streets and along highways while we buy condos in Stockholm on our smartphones backed by the blockchain technology.
In the midst of all this fantabulous expectation, we have a group of policy activists who want to regulate the internet as if it were just another public utility. We are asked by netneutrality proponents to see the internet as no different than the regulated monopolies that were imposed a century ago to deliver gas or water or electricity or postal services.
Predictably, they rallied against the U.S. Federal Communications Commission vote Thursday to end net neutrality regulation brought in by the Obama administration in 2015. As a result, the net neutrality posse says, giant telecoms will throttle democracy, freedom of expression, innovation and competition.
Nothing new here. Supporters of utility-style regulation are grasping at a failed policy model. The FCC is the true liberator of the internet.
We live in an age that promises technological miracles, digital revolutions and radical economic transformation. Soon, electric autonomous vehicles will whoosh us through city streets and along highways while we buy condos in Stockholm on our smartphones backed by the blockchain technology that one TED-talking guru says will transform financial services, the deep architecture of the corporation, animate the Internet of Things, recast the role of government, revamp our content industries and solve most of the world’s problems from health care to food supply.
In the midst of all this fantabulous expectation, much of it based on the combination of computers and broadband communications, we have a group of policy activists who want to regulate the internet as if it were just another public utility that moves single commodities. We are asked by net-neutrality proponents to see the internet as no different than the regulated monopolies that were imposed a century ago to deliver basic services and raw materials — gas or water or electricity or postal services — through oneway pipelines that stopped dead at delivery.
The arguments supporting these regulated utilities a century ago are identical to the claims put forward by netneutrality proponents who rallied Thursday in opposition the U.S. Federal Communications Commission vote to end net-neutrality regulation brought in by the Obama administration in 2015. As a result of the FCC decision, they say, giant telecoms will throttle democracy, freedom of expression, equality, innovation and competition.
Nothing new here. In 1843, a U.S. senator from Maryland warned against allowing “private expresses” to deliver U.S. mail because they would skim the highest-value business and undermine service. A regulated postal monopoly, it was said, would “bind the nation together” by facilitating educational, personal, literary and business correspondence.
It is easy to garner public support for the idea that the internet as the public knows it — a vast world of information, entertainment, and communication that seemingly nobody controls and nobody should control — will be “throttled” (the great killer buzzword of the neutralists) if the government withdraws regulation.
Politicians and activists thrive on the language of liberation. “An open Internet is critical to our democracy,” tweeted Canada’s Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains. “Our government will continue to stand for freedom of expression, equality and diversity, no matter what other jurisdictions decide.”
Bains was supported by Conservative Tony Clement, who tweeted his net-neutrality credentials: “Yes, more competition, but until then don’t let the oligopoly telcos throttle the Internet.” Michael Geist at the University of Ottawa says “net neutrality means that all content and applications should be treated equally and that choices made by Internet users should be free from ISP or telecom interference.”
It is easy to portray big telcos as villains and claim that without net neutrality Bell, Rogers, Shaw, AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and others will be allowed to kill innovation, raise prices unfairly, squeeze users and pummel competition. Good people and companies will be pushed aside. It is also easy to claim that regulating the internet as a public utility will liberate consumers and suppliers of internet services.
We should all know better, because we all have experienced how neutrality works — or rather, how it doesn’t work.
For decades, taxi neutrality laws dominated cities, with one size and one price for all, no matter when, where or how the customer travelled. Uber changed that, in part by offering variable rates and operating principles that broke with the licensed regime imposed by municipal regulators.
Our freeways and highways are working models of road neutrality. At any time, anywhere, drivers are free to stream onto highways, free of any of the blocking, throttling and paid prioritization that private road tolls might bring. The result of road neutrality is constant congestion, with drivers dependent on politicians to determine whether new roads are built as a public utility, with no regard to price and cost.
Postal neutrality dominated for centuries, until key parts of the business were liberated from neutrality by allowing competitors to travel the same routes to deliver parcels. Today, UPS and FedEx compete with government postal services on quality and price. Recently, UPS announced another break with postal-neutrality principles, saying it would impose a surcharge on U.S. packages shipped the week before Christmas. The objective, says UPS, is to end congestion by prompting shippers and consumers to postpone deliveries that are non-essential holiday items until after the Christmas rush.
Promoters of net neutrality might learn from the history of public utilities and the experience in de-neutralized sectors such as postal services. Under deregulation, telcos in competition with one another would have more incentive to innovate and supply the infrastructure for the promised technological miracles than they would under the centuries-old utility model. Cheers for the FCC.