The net neutrality Chicken Littles are back
Washington Examiner
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In case you have not noticed the world going dark, we must remind you the internet died on June 11, 2018. That was when the Federal Communications Commission implemented its “Restoring Internet Freedom” rule, which repealed the FCC’s 2015 “Open Internet Order,” more commonly known as “net neutrality.”
While the internet was born, grew, and thrived without net neutrality, the Democratic Party and its media allies warned us all that if President Barack Obama’s net neutrality policy was repealed, the internet would end.
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Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) embodied the absurdity of this when he warned, “Ending net neutrality ends the internet as we know it,” as did NBC News when it predicted, “Ending net neutrality will destroy everything that makes the internet great.”
None of these predictions came true. None of the warnings were ever based in reality. Investments in broadband deployment and high-speed availability and performance have gone up since Obama’s rule was repealed, as all sensible noncatastrophizing analysis foretold.
But now that the Biden administration has finally secured political dominance over the FCC, Democrats are trying to bring net neutrality back.
Why would they do this? For the same reason Democrats do almost everything — the accumulation of central power.
When Congress amended the Communications Act of 1934 with the Telecommunications Act of 1996, it divided communications providers into two categories: “information services,” which would be governed loosely by Title I of the act, and “telecommunications services,” which could be regulated more tightly by Title II of the act.
Telecommunications services, such as telephone companies, can be identified as “common carriers,” subjecting them to substantial FCC authority, including the power to set prices, dictate how networks are operated, and ban premium services to preferred customers.
These are the powers over internet providers that Democrats are desperate to acquire.
The results of giving such regulatory powers over internet providers can be seen in a comparison of broadband deployment in the United States, where the internet has not been subject to net neutrality rules, and Europe, where providers are regulated as common carriers.
According to one recent study, 92% of American households have access to ultrahigh-speed networks of 100 megabits per second or more, compared to just 67% of European homes. American access is also far more reliable than it is in Europe. At the height of the COVID-19 shutdown, European regulators had to ask Netflix and YouTube to lower the quality of their streaming services so the inferior European network would not collapse.
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The reason for U.S. superiority is clear. American companies free to set rates and manage their infrastructure have invested double what European companies have.
The internet was doing just fine before Obama forced net neutrality on providers in 2015, and it has been doing even better since then-FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai repealed net neutrality regulations in 2018.