FCC Looks for Balance in Net Neutrality Debate

Lawrence Spiwak, president of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Policy Studies toned the rhetoric down further and returned to Commissioner Copps’ advocating the case-by-case approach to anti-competitive claims. “I am very pleased that there is increasing call for case-by-case adjudication rather than broad proscriptive rules which may end up causing more harm than good,” he said.

Spiwak said the entire debate is troubling because things people are moving very fast and this issue has becomes very political. “We haven’t really grounded ourselves in solid analysis to figure out what exactly are the problems and how do we deal with them,” Spiwak said. “Is it a horizontal issue [related to] the number of firms involved in the market? Is it a vertical issue, a free speech issue, a sabotage issue that involves price regulation? Is it about disclosure? We have to determine what the standard is that we want to apply in looking at those issues.”

Ammori said the number of firms is an issue. He called it the cozy duopoly where the maximum number of competitors in any given market is two. “So if you don’t like your cable company you can switch to your DSL company and that’s about it. With this kind of imperfect competition …we have to rely on regulation because we can’t rely on competition,” he said.

Many people against net neutrality legislation say that the market should play itself out because there are too many unknowns to make long-term regulatory rules now. Feld said that is a bad idea. “We have seen time and time again that while waiting for the market to play out, we put al the eggs in the competitor’s basket and if it comes out wrong then we have seriously destroyed one of our important critical infrastructure, one of the drivers of our economy and one of the most important engines for free speech and civic engagement that any of us have every seen,” Feld said. “For that reason, net neutrality that speaks to very limited rules that say we are gong to prevent certain kinds of conduct by providers is the right way to go until we know for sure whether we can let competitors act without any kind of restraint.”

Ferree believes the market already is fiercely competitive and that the worst thing we can do is impose regulation. “Regulation discourages investment. Let the market grow and see what happens,” he said.