Should the Government Regulate Net Neutrality?

Recommend (1) Comments (1)

If you want more affordable Internet access, then you have to be concerned about higher prices from neutrality regulation.  When Net neutrality emerged in Congress in 2006, a Forrester Research analysis predicted that if Congress passed it, “Legal costs will shoot through the roof – draining the pockets of everyone involved.”

Guess who’ll wind up paying?  And Net neutrality’s costs don’t end there.

ISP’s are investing $24 billion in network upgrades this year to handle the oncoming crush of video streams, movie downloads and other online traffic.  But given the surging growth of online data, even this by itself won’t be enough.  We need smart networks capable of differentiating between a movie stream that needs prioritization and an email that can be delayed a few seconds.

But Net neutrality’s complex pricing regulations would create a legal loophole that pushes the huge cost for tomorrow’s Internet entirely onto the Net user. A net neutrality law would let Google, Amazon and other large online companies avoid paying anything toward the cost of deploying these networks.

Let's be clear: It's wonderful that so many imaginative new services are migrating to the Net.  But basic economics (and common sense) suggests government should not try to micromanage how the future Internet gets built, particularly at the expense of ordinary consumers who won't get to choose if the government decides.