U.S. Actually Performed Worse During Covid Than Some Net Neutrality Countries, Not Better.

Internet service providers (ISPs) and their defenders are repeatedly claiming that the US did better than other network neutrality countries (specifically, the EU27) when it came to handling the crush of Covid-19 induced traffic. Unsurprisingly, they credit the lack of regulation for this amazing response. Once again, this claim does not hold up to real scrutiny. As with the investment nonsense, this is a highly complicated area and therefore subject to a lot of spin and heated arguments over what the data actually show and how to explain it. It is made even more difficult by the complete lack of any official statistics.

• Contrary to industry boosterism, everything was not awesome for networks during Covid.
• The U.S. Performed Worse Than Some Countries With Net Neutrality Laws.
• There isn’t a lot of evidence to support the “U.S. did better than the EU” claim.