Earlier this month, the chief financial officer of Verizon, one of the nation’s largest internet service providers, discussed the build-out of the company’s broadband fiber network to homes.
The network, which goes by the name FiOS, “continues to be a very good product,” Matt Ellis, the CFO, told investors at a conference sponsored by UBS. According to Ellis, consumers who opt out of cable but who subscribe to so-called over-the-top services such as Netflix “want the best broadband experience you can get, and FiOS is the best broadband experience in the marketplace.”
Therein lies the problem with the action led by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to repeal so-called net neutrality rules, which prevent ISPs from blocking, slowing or impeding content from providers they don’t own. The rules, to borrow Ellis’ phrase, help to assure the best broadband experience you can get regardless who owns the content you consume.
As the Republican majority at the FCC sees it, net neutrality constitutes “heavy-handed, utility-style regulation” that depresses investment and innovation.
Rather than order ISPs to keep their networks open – which, by the way, is the whole point of the internet’s decentralized design – the FCC will require ISPs “to disclose information about their practices to consumers, entrepreneurs, and the Commission, including any blocking, throttling, paid prioritization, or affiliated prioritization.”
According to Pai, the market – backed by laws governing competition and consumer protection – will achieve the ends of net neutrality without the need for rules to achieve it.
The evidence suggests otherwise. Most of us connect to the internet through our ISP. And for most of us, the market for ISPs tends to be a monopoly. In the neighborhood where I live, you can choose Spectrum as your ISP. That’s the choice.
Last February, New York’s attorney general accused Spectrum of misleading consumers with promises of speeds for wired internet that, as it happened, were as much as 70 percent slower than promised. The company allegedly charged customers as much as $109.99 per month for premium plans that could not achieve speeds promised by Spectrum in its slower plans.
Consumers knew they were being ripped off. (You can test the speed of your connection.) But acting alone, there was little they could do to compel Spectrum to honor its promise.
Though a class action may force the company to reimburse consumers for the wrong, a rule that required Spectrum to serve customers at speeds the company promised would have allowed them to receive the service they paid for.
In short, all the transparency in the world won’t help if you’re served by a monopoly.
The internet is the infrastructure of our modern age and, for that matter, the medium of our democracy. It resembles the electric grid more than it does the entertainment, sports and social networks that stream across it.
As most consumers know, ISPs can (and do) charge as much for connections as the market will bear. Net neutrality asks in return that they not privilege one stream of content over another.