Pro Net Competition: Op-Eds and Editorials
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Spare the Net
April 22, 2008 - link >>Dick Armey, Washington Times
When economic stagnation gripped the country in the 1970s, I was an economics professor in my home state of Texas. Back then when I was teaching a class and needed a real-world example of how government overregulation harmed the economy and stifled innovation, I would point to any number of sectors in the economy. This was the era when making a long-distance call was a big deal.
In the wake of the economic malaise of the 1970s, economists began to seriously look at deregulation as a way to enhance economic growth. Airlines, trucking, energy and telecommunications all were opened to market competition, unleashing a new era of economic growth, innovation and investment.
The telecommunications industry went from protected regional monopolies to a competitive marketplace, and when the government got out of the way, consumers won.
McCLURE: Educate, not regulate, to close broadband gap
March 29, 2008 - link >>Dave McClure, Des Moines Register
The debate over national broadband policy nearly always centers on issues of the broadband infrastructure - what types of broadband are available, at what speeds and at what costs. And all too often, that debate is driven by rhetoric and distortions rather than by facts.
With overall home broadband penetration breaking 50 percent, the Pew Internet and American Life Project noted in a September 2007 survey that broadband was adopted by a majority of consumers faster than any previous technology. Broadband took 10 years to break the 50 percent adoption level, followed by the CD player at 10.5 years, the VCR at 14 years, cell phones at 15 years and color TVs and personal computers at 18 years.
Really bad ideas
March 20, 2008 - link >>Richard W. Rahn, Washington Times
What do you think about people who keep promoting ideas that have been tried and have failed innumerable times over the last couple of thousands of years? I refer to members of the U.S. Congress — the same crowd whose foolish acts have given us the current economic mess — but their hubris never ends.
Price controls never work because they deny economic participants the necessary information to properly allocate scarce resources and motivate people to produce needed goods and services. The Roman Emperor Diocletian (fourth century B.C.) tried price controls with food grains, and they, of course, failed. President Nixon tried them, and economists now agree they laid the groundwork for the post-1973 decline in U.S. production workers’ real wages.
Net neutrality hearing merely a ‘show trial’
March 17, 2008 - link >>Derek Hunter, Politico
On Feb. 25, the Federal Communications Commission went to Harvard Law School to hold a hearing on the Internet management practices of Comcast, the largest provider of broadband Internet access in the country. Why Harvard, when the FCC is located in Washington? Because Harvard is near the district represented by Rep. Ed Markey, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, who has been a longtime advocate for regulation of the Internet.
The hearing was a typical show trial: two panels weighted heavily with experts opposing Comcast, Verizon (the only other company to participate) and all other Internet service providers on the grounds that they can’t be trusted to do what they have done since the inception of the Internet: keep it open and available for all legal traffic. The heart of the matter was whether Comcast’s rerouting of traffic using the file-sharing software BitTorrent to less crowded areas of the Internet at peak hours constituted “blocking” traffic or was simply a reasonable Internet management technique that harmed no one while ensuring improved browsing experiences for the majority of its customers.
Internet Wrecking Ball
February 25, 2008 - link >>ANDY KESSLER, Wall Street Journal
Imagine a town that has all sorts of gasoline pipelines running by it but only one gas pump. Rationing is inevitable. So are price controls.
Everyone gets equal amounts, except of course first responders like police and ambulances, which should get all the gas they want. And, well, so should the mayor. And if you can make a good business case that you work 60 miles away, you can file paperwork and perhaps pull some strings for more gas. How about those kids hot-rodding around town who can’t drive 55? They get last dibs, and maybe we can sneak in some gas thinner to slow down their engines and not waste gas.
You can do all that and constantly update the gas neutrality rules—or you can just open another gas station across the street. Or one on each corner.
This is the essence of the Ed Markey’s (D., Mass.) Orwellian-named Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008, which would foist network neutrality on the wild and woolly Internet. The Federal Communications Commission is holding a public hearing today at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Mass., to build the case for the ill-conceived idea of preventing, as Mr. Markey’s bill would, network operators from using technologies that may favor one application over another.
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