In advance of tomorrow’s Senate hearings, the Washington Post has this editorial in today’s paper that basically comes out against net neutrality. The editorial makes a good bottom-line point regarding the negative acts that might occur absent net neutrality regulations: these woes-to-come are fundamentally speculative. Nothing bad has happened yet.
The weakest aspect of the neutrality case is that the dangers it alleges are speculative. It seems unlikely that broadband providers will degrade Web services that people want and far more likely that they will use non-neutrality to charge for upgrading services that depend on fast and reliable delivery, such as streaming high-definition video or relaying data from heart monitors. If this proves wrong, the government should step in. But it should not burden the Internet with preemptive regulation.
But, the editorial writers made a truly laughable gaffe by writing
The advocates of neutrality suggest, absurdly, that a non-neutral Internet would resemble cable TV: a medium through which only corporate content is delivered. This analogy misses the fact that the market for Internet connections, unlike that for cable television, is competitive: More than 60 percent of Zip codes in the United States are served by four or more broadband providers that compete to give consumers what they want — fast access to the full range of Web sites, including those of their kids’ soccer league, their cousins’ photos, MoveOn.org and the Christian Coalition.
The Post, which owns one of the top ten cable companies in the country, CableOne, can’t really believe the market for broadband services is competitive, can it? I think not. This line is straight out of the cable industry’s talking point papers that it circulates to members.
The other gaffe: relying on FCC data to say that more than 60% of zip codes are served by more than four broadband providers. Ha ha ha. That’s funny.
Number one, the FCC counts any broadband provider as serving an entire zip code if it only serves one home in that zip code, a fact that drives the Commission itself to warn that the data are not helpful for determining competition in the broadband sector.
Number two, as Tim Karr points out, the GAO has pooped on the FCC’s data and has determined that most consumers can choose from, at most, two broadband providers. That’s a duopoly, not competition.
Number three, even if broad zip code-level network provider data were appropriate, the data reported by the Commission is wrong more than it’s right, something that work-a-day communications attorneys say they deal with all the time.
Number four, who do you know, outside of, maybe, Manhattan, that actually can choose from among four broadband providers? Nobody, I suspect.
Cynthia Brumfield at 5:18 PM|Comments(0)
Blogs We Read
