Title II communications IS the ‘slow lane’

[Commentary] The substance of Title II common carrier regulation is very real, and it could deal a huge blow to the Internet economy.

Title II means price regulation. It means asking Washington and the state utility commissions for permission to launch new products, change existing ones, or deploy new technology, and to approve marketing and advertising programs. It means hundreds of other rules that were written for the monopoly telephone network 80 years ago but that would now apply to the vastly different Internet environment.

Title II would threaten the healthy system of Internet interconnection and peering that evolved without government oversight. Title II would bring back tariffs, intercarrier compensation, and a host of other bureaucratic do’s and don’ts. Meanwhile, because heavily regulated companies tend to be experts at operating in such a confusing environment, competition from new entrants would falter.

Quarantining the Internet from Title II was one of the best economic policies of the last generation. Unleashing Title II on the Internet could spread an epidemic of confusion and litigation across an Internet environment that over decades has developed millions of fruitful technical and commercial connections outside (and often oblivious to) the old Title II regime. In short, Title II would threaten Internet innovation at its very foundation.

[Swanson is president of Entropy Economics]