This is the fourteenth installment in our series on the proposed Net Neutrality regulations. If you haven’t followed “Neutrality’s Reality” from the beginning, the introduction is in the Arizona Daily Independent at here.
“For what more shall thy need, than what thine government provides?” [I Barack 3:3]
The Federal Communication Commission has passed its orders for Net Neutrality and has yet to allow the people to see the actual content of the regulations. From what little the Commission has told us, however, the content could be devastating.
While considering neutrality, the Commission also passed an order allowing the non-elected bureaucrats of the Commission to preempt, or override, state laws: Approximately twenty states have passed laws preventing municipalities or other levels of government from building wireless internet networks to compete with private industry, and the Commission voted—along party lines—to override restrictions on wireless networks in Chattanooga, Tennessee and Wilson, North Carolina.
Rather than lifting regulations on private carriers, rather than enabling real competition, the Commission has made it perfectly clear that it wants to see government offering internet services.
And if you’ve followed this series all along, you will recall the revelation in “Neutrality’s Reality: Government Killed the Radio Star” that government-operated stations were exempt from the very same regulations the Commission just expanded on all non-government internet providers. With all the overreach the Commission has already foisted on the American consumer, misconstruing the exemption clause to include the radios that underlie wireless internet networks is but a lark for this Commission.
Think ahead to the consequences: Not only can any individual claim to want to assemble a “directory” and require ISPs to provide detailed, personally-identifiable subscriber information, and assemble that information in such a way as to monitor individual usage, by using municipal wireless, people would inherently share detailed information with the government directly. Exemption cuts out the middleman.
Which brings us back to preemption: Twenty states have passed laws—through legislatures composed of duly-elected officials—to limit or prevent governments from competing with internet providers. By undoing two specific limitations, the Commission has signaled clearly that it wants the government, free of its own regulation, in the internet business.
Because the Commission wants government in the internet business, and because the new neutrality regulations will stifle competition and dramatically increase costs to the regulated (and non-government) internet providers, the Commission is positioning government to be the source of internet connectivity.
Looking at Arizona, municipal internet deployments over the past decade or so have largely been abject failures, wasting money and performing poorly. The market neither requires nor supports a government internet model. And yet the Commission wants to override the market and move ahead.
Now, one may consider the unprecedentedly-large datacenter the federal government has built in Utah to store surveillance data. Or one may consider government hacks of journalists like Sharyl Attkisson. Or one may consider the lack of innovation in the phone networks under tight government regulation up to 1984. And considering any of these situations, one might conclude the government could imperil free speech, individual privacy, or electoral fairness.
But let’s just focus on the facts that the telephone network suppressed innovation under heavy regulation, and that municipal internet has proven a failing model, here in Arizona and across most of the country.
Once again, the Commission is absolutely wrong on preemption, as it is on neutrality. And, not surprisingly, both of these orders were party-line votes amongst the commissioners. Only the two Republicans on the Commission voted to keep a bureaucracy from growing and accreting more power to itself.
Next time, we close out the Neutrality’s Reality series. Until then…