Earlier this month President Obama announced his full support for net neutrality. The president’s history of executive actions has some conservatives concerned that he is going to harm yet another industry through excessive regulation.
As well founded as such concerns may be in principle, the specific idea of regulating the telecom industry’s Internet traffic is completely compatible with conservative free-market ideals.
The Internet has always been regulated. Internet traffic follows standards defined by what is known as the Internet Engineering Task Force, with ancillary support from other member organizations of the Internet Society. These standards guarantee that when someone clicks “send” on an email or attempts to visit a website, the effort is successful.
In the past, Comcast and Verizon have largely followed these standards. That is until 2011, when Verizon sued the government for the ability to throttle the bandwidth of certain websites if they did not pay additional fees. Comcast followed with its own lawsuit in 2012. The majority of the websites targeted by this scheme were video providers such as Netflix, whose rise in popularity directly correlated with a decline in cable subscriptions.
Cable is a dying industry, and conservatives should allow the free market to run its course. People are fleeing the overpriced cable bundles that sustain the industry. USA Today recently reported that Time Warner and Comcast lost 260,000 users in the third quarter alone.
To make up for their losses, providers are looking to the other area they control — broadband Internet traffic. These companies have no interest in providing true First World Internet access. They are stifling growth by restricting bandwidth between themselves and their paying customers. This has been documented by multiple studies of U.S. Internet speeds compared to those in other technologically advanced countries over the past two years.
As Internet speed and quality increase, the ability to provide high-resolution streaming television and movies also increases. The number of providers willing to allow access to their online streaming platforms without requiring a concurrent cable subscription will grow as well (CBS is planning to launch a streaming subscription service similar to HBO GO). To the extent that U.S. telecom companies improve their Internet products to match those in other technologically advanced countries, the industry hastens the demise of cable, leading to a loss in profits. The industry has a conflict of interest.
Since the telecoms are an oligopoly in the United States, and a monopoly in many places, they must be persuaded to act for the good of the public as well as the business community. This is not an industry whose nature will permit telecom versions of Uber and Lyft to replace the status quo.
While Netflix, Amazon and other major providers would be able to pay almost any fee imagined by a telecom provider, such fees will artificially restrict their growth and discourage new competition. While existing large corporations may also benefit from net neutrality, it is critically important for the smaller company that seeks to challenge industry leaders.
Comcast has hinted at how it will act if allowed to operate without regulations. The company already bans users from using HBO GO over the Roku streaming media player. It has intentionally slowed down Netflix. A failure to enforce net neutrality favors the status quo, not new ventures that embody the American ideals of entrepreneurship and creativity.
The entire economy will benefit from a flourishing Internet. It will allow many startups to grow and help Wall Street find the massive growth that it cannot find in Comcast’s falling cable subscriptions.
When politicians try to get involved in technology, everyone is generally worse off. Their track record is abhorrent. Both the Stop Online Piracy Act and the rollout of healthcare.gov exposed how little Congress and the White House understand the Internet.
This is why it seems so absurd for free-market conservatives to support policies that prop up the telecoms’ dying business model of companies fast on their way to becoming the next Blockbuster or Yellow Pages. The market has made its choice — the only question left is whether politicians will attempt to frustrate its decision.
Without careful research, net neutrality can become another issue where people have a strong possibility of making themselves look foolish — and the Internet doesn’t forget.
Jon Halperin is an information security consultant in the Washington area. Follow him on Twitter at @IT_SEC. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions for editorials, available at this link.
