Refuting Bogus Broadband Lobby Claims that Title II Harms Investment in Networks

The claim that restoring light-touch Title II authority and basic Open Internet rules would harm—or did harm, from 2015 through 2018—ISPs’ broadband network investments is extraordinary. Not only because mountains of evidence from the ISPs themselves demonstrate its falsity; it is also extraordinary because the mechanism by which this supposed harm would occur is illogical and unreasonable, and has been proven ever more outlandish over time.  ISPs exist to generate economic returns for their shareholders.  They do so by meeting the strong customer demand for robust and open broadband telecommunications services, not by creating artificial scarcity in the hopes that edge companies will pay for prioritized delivery. The real-world record over the past decade bears out the claim’s falsity.