FCC's net neutrality enforcement policy should be rated zero

[Commentary] A week before the transition to the new administration, the Federal Communications Commission’s Wireless Bureau issued a report about mobile “zero-rating” plans, which provide consumers the option of free data usage paid by advertising. This zero-rating kerfuffle exposes that network neutrality has transmogrified from the FCC’s original net neutrality purpose of protecting consumers’ freedom to competitively access and use the legal content, apps, and devices of their choice, to potentially taking away consumer’s freedom to access cost-saving content and apps of their choice on the device of their choice. How can the FCC claim to be pro-consumer, and then tell consumers that more consumer choice, control, and savings are a net neutrality violation?

The dirty little secret that the FCC does not want people to know is that Title II net neutrality is implicit FCC price regulation that by design forces consumers to subsidize corporations, the exact opposite of how the FCC implemented Title II historically before competition, where corporations’ communications bills always subsidized consumers’ communications bills.

[Scott Cleland is president of Precursor LLC.]