Now that the Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of net neutrality is beginning to take effect, Washington has closed in on the rarest of all its feats: relinquishing power over a realm it once controlled. Just a few procedural hurdles away from victory, supporters of consumer choice and innovation should celebrate accordingly.
Net neutrality was always a good name for a bad policy. Advocates in the Obama administration promised an “open” and “equal” Internet in which Internet service providers would “treat you like everyone else.” Unfortunately, equality under net neutrality was a euphemism for conformity, imposed from above.
The Obama administration’s rules from 2015 stopped ISPs from blocking, slowing down, or speeding up users’ connections to specific websites. In practice, this stopped consumers from purchasing plans tailored to their needs. For example, users who regularly watch movies might want to pay extra for broadband that loads Netflix quicker. Conversely, users who rarely watch online videos might reduce their Internet bills by accepting a slower connection to YouTube. Net neutrality made common sense plans such as these illegal.
In creating uniform Internet-conduct standards, net neutrality not only restricted consumer choice, but also stifled innovation and created dangerous opportunities for partisan misconduct or regulatory capture. Indeed, the larger broadband companies could well have manipulated the FCC’s standards to keep the inventive plans of smaller competitors off the market.
Worst of all, the Obama administration’s rules empowered the FCC to impose price controls on Internet plans. The FCC’s promise not to use this power was, at best, a distraction, since future FCC chairmen could implement price controls at any time. Perhaps this looming sword of Damocles explains the 5.6 percent decline in broadband network investment in the two years since net neutrality was implemented.
Ajit Pai, the FCC chairman appointed by President Trump, was right to reverse course, but defenders of the old rules will exhaust all options to stop the rollback. The Democrats’ plans for a congressional resolution to restore net neutrality will die in the House, but lawsuits will have a chance to challenge or stall Pai’s repeal effort. Much will depend on which federal appeals court is selected by lottery to hear the case.
Many liberals warn that net neutrality’s repeal will transform the Internet into the Wild West. (They mean a return to the harrowing time before 2015, when the Internet was flourishing.) Without net neutrality, they claim, ISPs might exclude rival content or diverse viewpoints, one of the best features of the internet.
However, there is “virtually no evidence of ISPs excluding rival content,” according to Maureen Ohlhausen, the Federal Trade Commission’s acting chair. This is because the twin threats of competition and antitrust law combined to rein in ISPs long before net neutrality. Competition, it must be emphasized, does not endanger free speech or viewpoint diversity, but fosters them.
From the start, net neutrality was a heavy-handed solution in search of a problem. Its repeal will be great news for consumers.
Elliot Kaufman (@esterlingk) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential Blog. He is a student at Stanford University.
