Don't Convert Internet Providers into Public Utilities

 

by

 

Randolph J. May *

 

October 3, 2014

 

Many people know that the Federal Communications Commission is considering imposing new "net neutrality" regulations on Internet service providers because it claims this is necessary to preserve an Open Internet.

 

What is little understood, however, is that one option under consideration would regulate Internet providers under a "utility model" known in FCC jargon as "Title II." For those not steeped in the intricacies of the Communications Act, Title II is the part of the statute containing dozens of various public utility-like regulatory mandates.

 

The FCC also is considering a less burdensome, more flexible "commercial reasonableness" regulatory model for Internet providers. But here's the problem: FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler continues to take every opportunity - indeed, seems to relish taking every opportunity - to proclaim that "Title II is on the table."

 

It's time for the FCC to take Title II off the table.

 

It would be bad for America's consumers to regulate broadband Internet service providers like today's electric utilities, last century's Ma Bell, or the nineteenth century's railroads. Yet that is what the Title II regime would do. Indeed, Susan Crawford, one of the leading Title II advocates, bluntly argues that "America needs a utility model" for Internet providers.

 

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Read the entire piece: http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/technology/219634-dont-convert-internet-providers-into-public-utilities 

 

* Randolph J. May is President of the Free State Foundation, an independent, nonpartisan free market-oriented think tank located in Rockville, Maryland.