Marc Andreessen says more net neutrality laws are not the answer

Comcast’s recent deal with Netflix re-ignited a debate on network neutrality and how best to implement it. Venture investor Marc Andreessen argues that competition is what will solve the problem, not more regulations.

Andreessen asked whether Comcast should be forced to handle an ever-increasing amount of traffic from Netflix for free, or whether there was some point Comcast should be compensated somehow for that load on its network. He argued that too much of the discussion about network neutrality assumes that the internet is a static thing, rather than something that is likely to increase exponentially in terms of its demand for bandwidth, and that a strict or dogmatic adherence to net neutrality would likely “kill investment in infrastructure [and] limit the future of what broadband can deliver.” After Fortune magazine writer Dan Primack argued that Comcast’s monopoly was a big part of the problem, Andreessen responded by comparing Netflix’s demands on the network to the highway traffic system. What if there was a trucking company whose usage of the highway system was growing by 200 or 300 percent every year, Andreessen asked -- at what point would it seem natural to charge that trucking company more for its use of a public resource, even if that might raise prices?