Excellent ACI study proves how net neutrality harms consumers

Kudos to Steve Pociask of the American Consumer Institute on his excellent paper on: "Net Neutrality and the Effects on Consumers."

• It should be required reading for all consumer groups.
• It exposes how net neutrality does not benefit the average American consumer, but benefits special interests like high-volume Internet users... like consumer "groups."   

Steve's clear, insightful, and easy-to-read paper explains how net neutrality would harm consumers by:

• shifting the cost burden away from high volume users onto average consumer;
• raising prices  for price-sensitive lower-income users; and
• impeding broadband demand, which would slow progress to universal broadband.

Steve's analysis is good proof of my longstanding charge that net neutrality is a "reverse Robin Hood" policy where the high-volume users's costs would be subsidized by average Americans who are below-average consumer of Internet bandwidth.

• It continues to amaze me that consumer groups and Democrats, that generally look out for the little guy and the disadvantaged, are throwing them under the bus on Net Neutrality.
• The reality of the Internet is that a small minority of users consume most all of the bandwidth.
• Thus a net neutrality one-size-fits-all, net neutrality regime would have the perverse redistributive effect of the average American being forced to pay more for less -- in order to subsidize bandwidth hogs and corporate welfare for dotcom billionaires. 

This excellent study on the effect on consumers, puts a lot more meat on my one-pager from last year: "Why Net Neutrality is Anti-consumer." 

Well done American Consumer Institute!