A high-stakes battle is being waged in Washington by competing elephants of the Internet universe under the nifty rubric of “net neutrality.”
My goodness, who wouldn’t be for that?
Proponents of net neutrality include some of the nation’s gaudiest online brand names – Amazon, eBay and Google, for example.
They are aligned against such telecom giants as Verizon and AT&T who provide Internet delivery services and want to retain the flexibility to charge whatever the traffic will bear.
It’s a confusing debate made all the more so by the disingenuous arguments coming from both sides.
On its face, the overarching question isn’t that complex: Should Congress prohibit Internet delivery services from charging premium (that is, higher) rates to content providers who want to be first in the pipeline to your PC? An imperfect but useful Colorado parallel are the controversial “Lexus lanes” that allow tollpayers to speed along Interstate 25 while the rest of us are stuck in the next lane of traffic.
The net neutrality crowd wants Congress to forbid any tiered pricing that might increase their delivery expenses.
However, net neutrality gets murky as players begin taking about potential impact. Both sides paint doomsday scenarios, claiming the other side will all but destroy the Internet as we know and love it.
Net neutrality has a nice ring to it. The term as originally coined meant that the Internet would have dumb – or neutral – delivery pipes that would convey all manner of information without favoritism.
Who gets the slow lane?
But the terms of art have morphed. Proponents now say that without prohibitions, the little guys will be priced out, relegated to the slow lane of what is now a free-wheeling information superhighway. Like murderous bridge trolls in ancient times, the villainous service providers will decide who gets to use the highway and who doesn’t. The big users like Google and eBay are among those who hire the lobbyists who preach net neutrality.
Opponents say the Internet will wither from lack of investment if they can’t develop a price structure that allows for an adequate return on investment. Indeed, they have invested heavily to boost the speed and reliability of their online services, taking the Internet from dial-up to high-speed delivery to higher-speed delivery in just a few years. The demands are ever-increasing as the Net is clogged with high-capacity users, such as those who transmit video. Without additional revenue, the telecoms say they may not have the wherewithal to increase the capacity of the delivery pipes.
This side of the argument belongs to some of the most powerful companies in telecommunications – the so-called Baby Bells, for example, and some of the big cable companies, such as Comcast.
There is truth and bluster on both sides of the argument.
“This is a big fight between large economic enterprises over what the future of the Internet is going to look like,” said Mike McCurry, a former press secretary for Bill Clinton who is now lobbying the issue on behalf of telecom-related businesses and is working overtime to remove the halo from the Googles and Amazons on the other side.
A brigade of lobbyists has become increasingly vocal in recent months as Congress has tried to pass something before recessing. Bloggers, websites and slick PR efforts have sprung up seemingly overnight.
Debate follows party lines
The debate in Congress, which likely will continue in the fall, appears to be forming along party lines, Republicans siding with the telecoms against additional regulation and Democrats siding with Silicon Valley in favor of price protection.
There are a half-dozen bills in Congress that attempt to deal with this issue. One, co-sponsored by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas, is a telecom industry offering that has passed the House. It’s designed to forestall net neutrality by offering some regulatory tools to use on Internet providers that improperly block Internet access.
It seems unnecessary to inflict pure net neutrality laws on the delivery providers in the absence of any Internet pricing or access abuses. Companies that build the infrastructure ought to be able to price access as the market will bear. Google, by way of example, charges premium prices for advertisers who want space at the top of your Web page. It’s a business model that works; why not allow Comcast or Verizon to find a fair pricing model that will work for them?
Given the evolving nature of the Internet and the law of unintended consequences, we encourage lawmakers to consider reasonable safeguards that can be summoned if problems arise. Net neutrality provisions need to encourage innovation and protect the online consumer as well as level the playing field for the commercial goliaths.
