Author: Roberta Robinette, AT&T Colorado President
If you are like me and follow news about the internet, you have no doubt seen the screaming headlines about net neutrality and the Federal Communications Commission. Contrary to what made those headlines so clickable, the FCC did not radically change how the internet operates. Rather, the FCC did right by consumers by returning to the light-touch regulatory framework that allowed the internet to thrive from 1996-2015. That bipartisan light touch framework successfully protected consumers and governed the internet from its inception more than 20 years ago until 2015. Over the decades, the internet grew, innovation exploded, and the nation witnessed unprecedented investment.
In 2015, then-Chairman Wheeler’s FCC took the radical and unprecedented step of subjecting the internet for the first time to 80 year old public utility regulations that were written for the technology and the marketplace from a bygone era that the internet has largely replaced – monopoly telephone service. These rules slowed broadband deployment nationwide, especially in rural and underserved communities. Additionally, the application of these decades-old common carrier reporting requirements and the specter of further regulatory micromanagement overwhelmed small internet service providers and reduced their longer-term incentives to invest in the next generation broadband technologies necessary for a 21st century economy. Overall broadband investment has dropped by billions of dollars since 2015 – a first in the absence of a recession.
With so much emotion and hyperbole surrounding the net neutrality issue, it’s important to be aware of the existing consumer protections and antitrust laws that continue to keep the internet open and free:
· Federal regulators have ample authority to police and enforce compliance with the FCC’s rules, including the requirement for ISPs to accurately disclose any blocking, throttling, and/or prioritization practices. The FCC has authority to bring enforcement actions – and impose significant penalties – if it were to find a provider’s blocking, throttling or prioritization practices to be inconsistent with the provider’s disclosures.
· The FCC also monitors the broadband market and identifies market entry barriers by, among other activities, reviewing informal complaints filed by consumers, and will investigate and take enforcement action as appropriate with respect to failures to comply with the Internet Freedom Order.
· Antitrust laws protect competition in all sectors of the economy where the antitrust agencies have jurisdiction. Application of these strong, enforceable antitrust laws would address any of the hypothetical harms, should any ever materialize. If internet service providers were, contrary to the history of the internet and their own business interests, to enter into agreements to unfairly block, throttle, or discriminate against internet conduct or applications, they could be subject to enforcement under anti-trust laws. Applying the same body of law to internet service providers, edge providers, and all internet actors avoids regulatory distortions.
· State attorneys general also have authority in appropriate cases to enforce state unfair competition and consumer protection laws against internet service providers.
Despite these existing protections, some people are pushing for legislation that would regulate the internet at the state and local level. But the internet does not stop at the state line or city limit. State and local laws to regulate the internet are not only unnecessary, they would also do more harm than good by discouraging investment and putting a drag on the economy. It’s not hard to imagine how a patchwork of inconsistent regulations – from potentially 50 different states and countless municipalities – would fracture the internet, confuse consumers, and harm competition. And, just like the burdensome 2015 FCC Order, such regulation would stifle investment—investment that we know is a key component to a thriving Colorado economy.
The internet is too important to our lives, our economy and our future to be subject to ever-changing political winds. AT&T Chairman Randall Stephenson recently emphasized that, ultimately, congressional action is needed to establish an "Internet Bill of Rights" that applies to all internet companies and guarantees neutrality, transparency, openness, non-discrimination and privacy protection for all internet users. Federal legislation would not only ensure consumers' rights are protected, but it would provide consistent rules of the road for all internet companies across all websites, content, devices and applications.
In the very near future, technological advances like self-driving cars, remote surgery and augmented reality will demand even greater performance from the internet. Without predictable rules for how the internet works, it will be difficult to meet the demands of these new technology advances.