Mobile Future: Proposed Network Neutrality Regulations Put Damper on Broadband Jobs, Revenue

Mobile Future -- a group pushing for marketplace, rather than government, spurs to broadband deployment and adoption -- says proposed network neutrality regulations will put a damper on jobs and revenue in the broadband sector.

That is according to a study by Brattle Group economist Coleman Bazelon and paid for by the group, which includes AT&T, various chambers of commerce, the Hispanic Technology & Telecommunications Partnership and others who have registered reservations about the FCC's plans. According to Bazelon, the FCC's proposed expansion and codification of network neutrality guidelines, which would include a specific rule on nondiscrimination, could slow revenue growth in the broadband business by a sixth over the next two years, and result in the loss of almost 15,000 jobs in 2011 alone, over a third of a million broadband jobs in the next ten years, and over 1.4 million jobs in the greater economy.

Free Press research director Derek Turner, said, "This industry-funded research is based on deeply flawed assumptions. The Mobile Future study's central premise that Network Neutrality rules would lower broadband industry revenues by one-sixth over the next decade incorrectly extrapolates from the past impacts of telephone regulations on DSL growth, and erroneously assumes that light-touch Network Neutrality rules would have the same overstated impact. The study also completely ignores the practical reality that we have for years, and are now, living in a world of defacto-Net Neutrality, and that revenues are soaring. AT&T was put under a strict Network Neutrality regime as a result of its merger with Bell South, and its revenues saw healthy growth during that time."