Network neutrality and mobile broadband innovation

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission’s approach to network neutrality, and especially the more stringent rules for which many Open Internet proponents have pushed, may ultimately inhibit consumer choice. Net neutrality has focused ostensibly upon protecting competition and innovation in the market for Internet-based content and applications. But to do so, the movement would dramatically limit innovation in the market for broadband service: broadband providers would generally be required to offer customers access to all Internet access or none at all, and to treat all Internet traffic relatively identically.

[Lyons is an associate professor at Boston College Law School]