(Washington, DC) While Congress considers writing new law to regulate telecommunications and broadband, the debate intensifies over whether, how much or even if new rules are needed in the post-Internet era. The complex questions surrounding what kinds of new broadband regulations are needed got a good airing by a panel of academicians at Pulver’s Peripheral Visionaries Summit today.
Few of the academics advocated any form of heavy-handed governance of new communications services. Columbia University professor Eli Noam argued for what he called the “Darwinian” regulatory approach, which sets some basic principles for communications-related companies to abide by, followed by enforcement of the antitrust laws and self-governance.
The issue is “Darwinian v. intelligent design and I think Darwin wins here. This is known as common law, essentially. Congress establishes a wide, short set of common principles. The FCC implements regulations, then some form of state rules” might apply, Noam said. But “an omnibus rule by Congress is truly a prescription for disaster.”
Noam fears that over-regulation will lead to stagnation in broadband network innovation. “The more conditions one puts on broadband networks, the less incentive there is to build them out.”
He posited an intriguing middle-ground between net neutrality regulations and no access regulations whatsoever. “You can have a rule that says you the carrier can discriminate among your customers but you can’t discriminate among your customer’s customers,” thereby capping the degree to which a broadband provider can block content and services.
Cardoza Law School Professor Susan Crawford agreed that a lighter regulatory touch is the best approach. “I would like to see us take a more enlightened and light-handed approach to this regulation,” she said. Still, she didn’t cotton to Noam’s Darwinian road-map. “If Darwinian regulation wins, we will always be looking backwards rather than planning for the future.”
Wharton School of Business Professor Kevin Werbach struck a pessimistic note. “I think the battle is over and we lost. The FCC has adopted a network neutrality statement. It has also won commitments from SBC and Verizon that they abide by that policy statement for a long time and none of it has any teeth.”
Columbia Law School Professor Tim Wu stressed the importance of sound regulatory practices in order to maintain communications networks capable of spurring national economic growth. But that growth comes from small entrepreneurial players, not the big network providers. “These companies that are creating economic growth are clearly at the edges.”
Some form of network neutrality is needed to keep these networks humming, Wu said, or innovation and economic growth could stagnate. “Everyone has to be in the process to open the market whenever they can because the market has a tendency to close itself.”
Cynthia Brumfield at 11:18 PM|Comments(0)
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