Both the FCC and FTC Chairmen appear to be suggesting that the current fifteen-year competition policy experiment in law to promote competition and reduce regulation in communications will ultimately fail -- requiring new preemptive common-carrier-like nondiscrimination regulation of ISPs to preserve a free and open Internet.     

• In his September 21st speech, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's first reason justifying the need for preemptive new FCC net neutrality regulations was limited ISP competition:
  • "One reason has to do with limited competition among service providers. As American consumers make the shift from dial-up to broadband, their choice of providers has narrowed substantially. I don’t intend that remark as a policy conclusion or criticism -- it is simply a fact about today’s marketplace that we must acknowledge and incorporate into our policymaking." 
• FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, in a 10-4-09 letter to the editor of the Washington Post in response to the Post's editorial, "The FCC's Heavy Hand," said:
  

Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics penned another great op-ed on net neutrality today entitled: "Google and the problem with net neutrality: Broadband has been a rare bright spot in the economy. Why discourage investment?" 

My favorite point Bret made was pointing out all of the investment, innovation and competitive benefits that have occured since net neutrality supporters have said there was a problem requiring regulation circa 2004. 

• Not only have net neutrality supporters not been able to find credible evidence of an industry pattern of anti-competitive problems over the last five years, they also are ignoring all the competitive gains and benefits that have occurred over the last five years as well. 

Facts matter and facts are not the friends of net neutrality proponents.    

Regulate down for all not up for some is the excellent core message of the Wall Street Journal's op-ed "Google Exceptionalism," which spotlights the slippery slope toward Internet regulation of selectively applying new net neutrality regulations to only some "networks" predicated on fairness.

The WSJ op-ed helps focus the debate on what has helped make the Internet so successful --the bipartisan Internet policy statement in the 1996 Telecom Act that it is the policy of the United States  "to preserve the...competitive free market... Internet... unfettered by Federal or State regulation." For fifteen years, bipartisan consensus has resisted the siren song of some to regulate or tax the Internet, and in turn this bipartisan consensus has allowed the Internet to flourish.  

The WSJ op-ed also helps focus the debate on the perils of abandoning regulatory restraint toward the Internet based on neutrality/fairness.

The FCC Chairman's proposed rules to preemptively regulate a segment of the Internet to preserve an open Internet, risks reversing the current successful dynamic of fairly "regulating down" with less regulation rather than unfairly "regulating up" with more regulation for some. 

I posted the comment below on the Washington Post's IT blogpost where FreePress urged the the Post to disclose its financial interests in cable systems.

FreePress hounds any voice that doesn't support 'net neutrality'  regulation to disclose their financial interests, like they did with urging the Washington Post to disclose that they owned cable systems in their editorial opposing net neutrality. I agree they should have disclosed, but I don’t agree that disclosure is only important for net neutrality opponents, but not for proponents like FreePress and its allies. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.   

FreePress has frequently attacked me as a shill and Astroturf. They ignore that I openly, unabashedly, and regularly disclose that my firm Precursor LLC is an industry consulting firm that works for companies and that I am Chairman of NetCompetition.org which is funded by broadband interests. It is not news that I strongly agree with the broadband sector view that markets produce better outcomes for consumers than regulation.

FreePress' standard gameplan is to avoid engaging issues on the merits by constantly attacking opponents as biased corporate "shils" or "astroturf" that no one should listen to. I have long been up front that I represent broadband interests. FreePress, and their supporters, however, do not live up to the transparency standard that they demand of others.  

For example, FreePress' urged Washington Post reporter Cecilia Kang to post that The Washington Post editorial opposing net neutrality "The FCC's Heavy Hand" should have disclosed the Post's ownership of cable properties. On that basic point of transparency/disclosure I agree. 

However, when it comes to the news, Ms. Kang appears to have failed to disclose her increasingly obvious bias for promoting FreePress and their net neutrality agenda.

If you are interested in learning great "pearls of wisdom" based on expansive experience and clarity-of-thought on the question of wireless innovation, and proposed Internet regulation of wireless innovation, please read the Farber-Faulhaber white paper; at a minimum, please read the many wonderful highlights that I have pulled out of the paper for you below.

Professor Dave Farber, a widely respected Internet pioneer who has been called the "grandfather of the Internet" for his contributions to computer science, and a former Chief Technologist for the FCC, co-authored an important white paper with Professor Faulhaber for the FCC's Wireless innovation Notice of Inquiry.

Highlights from this outstanding paper:

Sascha Meinrath, a research director at the New America Foundation and former policy analyst at FreePress, accused National Public Radio of taking illegal "payola" because they fairly offered my anti-net neutrality-regulation op-ed, in addition to the pro-net-neutrality regulation op-ed NPR Online had posted the same day of FCC Chairman Genachowski's net neutrality speech. 

The leading justification offered by FCC Chairman Genachowski in his "Open Internet" speech announcing his intention to pursue formal net neutrality regulations was that "limited competition" was "simply a fact."

A fair review of the facts shows that broadband competition is anything but limited, it is actually robust, dynamic, and increasing in intensity.

• The problem comes from a choice to assume a static and pessimistic view the competition glass as half empty, because it is not perfect.
• This is not a fair representation of the broadband competitive situation because the core markets involved were originally price regulated monopolies but now are increasingly-dynamic, fiercely competitive markets where literally many tens of millions of Americans have taken advantage of available competitive choices.

I would like to highlight some important and illuminating competitive facts presented in an outstanding post by Link Hoewing over at Verizon's Policyblog:  

Americans expect dramatically more privacy online than they currently have; that is the essence of the findings of an outstanding new independent study led by Professor Joseph Turow of the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania entitled: "Americans Reject Tailored Advertising." The study/poll found:

• 86% of young adults say they don’t want tailored advertising if it is the result of following their behavior on websites other than one they are visiting, and 90% of them reject it if it is the result of following what they do offline.
• 69% of American adults feel there should be a law that gives people the right to know everything that a website knows about them.
• 92% agree there should be a law that requires “websites and advertising companies to delete all stored information about an individual, if requested to do so.”

My NPR Online op-ed: "Net Neutrality Regulations Compromise Freedoms" makes the case why the FCC Chairman's proposed net neutrality regulations are likely unconstitutional in multiple dimensions. 

If you like the op-ed please click on the "Recommend" check button above the title or at the end of the piece, that is in the link below, because that will keep the op-ed posted longer than otherwise.

• http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113297709

My proposed title, which was supplanted for space concerns, was: "Taking Freedom From Some Takes Freedom From All."

• Below is the text of my NPR Online op-ed.

"Net Neutrality Regulations Compromise Freedoms

September 29, 2009