In December 2017, the Federal Communications Commission took a controversial action that CNN claimed would “end the Internet as we know it.” The commission undid a 2015 Obama administration rule that imposed the heavy hand of federal regulation on Internet service providers.
Free market conservatives and ISPs supported the FCC’s return to the pre-Obama hands-off approach to Internet development. The FANG companies — Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google — joined CNN and liberals in supporting Obama’s draconian regulations.
So has the FCC’s action spelled doom and gloom? Noticed much of a change in the last year?
If you have, it’s because according to the technology news web site “Recode:”
“The internet is getting faster, especially fixed broadband internet. Broadband download speeds in the U.S. rose 35.8 percent and upload speeds are up 22 percent from last year, according to internet speed-test company Ookla in its latest U.S. broadband report.”
The Internet may represent the best recent example of how free markets benefit the greatest number of people at the lowest cost. Free markets aren’t perfect, but they sure beat government-controlled ones.
As the Internet grew in importance to the public over the last 30 years, both Democratic and Republican administrations adopted a hands-off policy. A Clinton-administration FCC report said:
“Government controls should be enacted only as a last resort if industry self-regulation — which [is] strongly endorsed — does not work out.”
Self-regulation has been a stunning success as readers of this column can attest. Speeds and service have improved steadily while costs have dropped for almost all users.
Today Netflix, Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple account for about 60 percent of Internet traffic. Netflix alone uses over 30 percent of all evening Internet traffic.
Growth of these mega-users put Internet service providers in a quandary. Netflix subscribers complained that service was choppy as network loads increased. But for ISPs to increase capacity required major backbone investments that could only be recouped by raising rates for all subscribers whether or not they used Netflix.
Here’s an analogy. We pay for roads and highways with fuel taxes. The more gas we use, the more we pay. That has been an equitable and straightforward way to allocate construction and maintenance costs (at least until the rise of electric vehicles).
Suppose instead that we were required to pay a flat fee when we renewed our license plates each year. Your grandmother, who drives 3,000 miles a year and never on an Interstate highway, would have to pay the same amount as an over-the-road trucker who drives over a hundred thousand miles each year.
The obvious free market answer for Internet capacity: Negotiate higher rates for heavy users like Netflix and others. But these reliably liberal companies saw lobbying their friends in the Obama administration as a way to avoid paying equitably for the capacity they use.
They stoked public fears of an Internet apocalypse where ISPs offered “fast lanes” to some companies while deliberately slowing down those unwilling or unable to pay.
The High Tech Forum debunks these claims in “The Myth of Internet Fast Lanes.”
In technical detail (and at great length), the article explains that “[Silicon] Valley’s lobbyists — the Internet Association and Engine — are so clueless about the subtleties of network engineering that they still claim it’s impossible to speed up one stream without degrading another. That’s so far from the truth it’s not even wrong; it’s just crazy.”
The Internet wasn’t broken, but true to form, the Obama administration leaped at the chance to bring another industry under the thumb of government regulation.
Scrounging around for existing legislation that it could twist to apply, it settled on the Telecommunications Act of 1934. Yes, 1934. “An act to provide for the regulation of wire or radio,” signed by President Franklin Roosevelt.
Since little in the act applied, Obama’s FCC was able to invent an Internet regulatory scheme out of whole cloth that it implemented in 2015. Satisfying its Silicon Valley patrons, it planned to regulate ISP rates and approve all capital investments. Needless to say, this prospect chilled Internet investment: It dropped for the first time in history.
As FCC regulatory machinery ground along, Internet innovation along with capacity improvements slowed to a glacial pace. Any new or novel uses that required additional ISP investment would require an FCC application, hearings, findings, draft regulations, comment periods, and hopefully bureaucratic approval.
Instead, the FCC’s December 2017 “Restoring Internet Freedom Order” not only allows but incentivizes ISPs to invest in greater capacity to the benefit of all. Witness both last year’s increased investment and faster Internet speeds.
With fifth generation wireless service (5G) coming in the next few years, we’ll all have even more Internet options thanks to free market incentives for wireless carriers.
So when CNN and the protesters it encouraged were hyperventilating about the end of the Internet, it was actually the end of price controls that favored Silicon Valley at the expense of you and me. The Sacramento Bee agonized that California’s tech behemoths “could be forced to pay more money to keep using the Internet as they do today.”
Let’s hope so.
The viewpoints expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Independent.
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Gee Howard, no mention of potential 5G health problems. Well that must be all conspiracy theory right? Have you ever heard of SAR ratings for current cellphones? Probably not. 5G has not undergone any rigorous testing in regards to human health. But why find that out? $$$$$$$$$$$$$$. And yes, there are medical professionals with PHDs who also agree with .my point.