Courtesy: DoomDaily.com
The Story
The Republican Party has strongly come out against the FCC’s recent plans to make net neutrality a de-facto regulation in the United States. Congressman Cliff Stearns, the highest ranking republican of the House Communications, Technology, and Internet Subcommittee wrote a letter to FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, stating that the FCC should conduct a thorough market analysis on the needs for net neutrality regulations before any policy is put into place. According to Mr. Stearns,
If after this analysis you conclude that intervention is necessary, the intervention should be tailored to your analysis and should be the minimum required to prevent the practices you have identified as appropriate targets of regulation.
And it’s not just one Republican who’s throwing down the gauntlet, but the entirety of the GOP. John Boehner, who is currently the House Minority Leader and one of the highest ranking members of the party, wrote a letter to President Obama. In the letter, Mr. Boehner questions the FCC’s motives for implementing standards for net neutrality:
We believe that network neutrality regulations would actually thwart further broadband investment and availability, and that a well-reasoned broadband plan would confirm our view. So to hastily begin a process of adopting network neutrality rules months before issuing such a plan implies that politics are driving the FCC’s decision-making process.
Mr. Boehner goes on to say that private sector that is the internet service provider industry is doing just fine without the government’s intervention.
Smells Fishy
I’m going to come right out and say it: more likely than not, the Republican impetus for fighting net neutrality comes not from some concern for American well-being, but from lobbyists.
Service providers are scared that net neutrality is going to make their maintenance fees more expensive. They’re right to be afraid. The FCC’s proposal is to make net neutrality apply to wired as well as wireless broadband. Imagine if AT&T or Verizon suddenly couldn’t throttle data connections. Chances are, they’d have to spend a lot more money on infrastructure. I suspect that the concern isn’t about whether or not the amount of money involved will bankrupt companies, but more of a question of how big the corporate bonuses will be in an age of net neutrality. Unless the GOP can tell its lobbyists to come up with some really solid evidence, I’m just going to right this off as paid-for, partisan politics.
