The FCC’s De-Americanization of the Internet

[Commentary] The governments of the world are watching to see if the Federal Communications Commission officially votes to de-Americanize the Internet with a U-turn change in American Internet policy by regulating America’s Internet like a telephone utility network.

If the FCC abandons America’s global Internet policy for national purposes, other governments naturally could as well. Moving away from a global Internet toward a national, bordered, and tariffed Internet could allow every country to turn their current large implicit Internet trade deficit with America into a future, explicit, large and highly lucrative Internet trade surplus at the expense of America’s bandwidth-hogging Internet companies. By attempting to fix an Internet that Americans know is not broken, the FCC is recklessly risking de-Americanizing the Internet and destroying the American benefits of a global Internet -- America’s most influential innovation and export in the modern era.

[Scott Cleland is President of Precursor LLC, a research consultancy for Fortune 500 companies]