How regulations from the rotary-phone era could impact the Internet

[Commentary] If Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler does indeed follow President Barack Obama's lead on Title II reclassification, it could cut an indiscriminate path through both core and edge Internet innovators, exposing Internet companies of all shapes and sizes offering any sort of transmission component to a puzzle palace of potential obligations and fees, from pricing restrictions to universal service funding requirements, and a raft of government reporting rules.

It would also pour molasses over the nation’s mobile broadband ecosystem which remains by far the most innovative, competitive, and fastest-growing of all broadband services precisely because it has never been subjected to this most burdensome and restrictive of our nation’s regulatory regimes. Old rules designed for early 20th century technologies like the rotary phone shouldn’t be allowed to impede the Internet’s future.

[Jonathan Spalter is the Chairman of Mobile Future, a lobbying organization which includes AT&T and Verizon]