Forbes

[Commentary] When Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai is done, the Internet service providers will once again be free to throttle traffic from competitors, and sites or services they don’t like, or charge services like Netflix a “toll” for the privilege of being delivered to customers at the full speed the customers are paying for. It seems to me, though, that the power dynamic has shifted, and that Netflix actually holds all the cards now—at least in areas with more than one ISP to choose from.

While much the internet is in an uproar about Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s plan to roll back Network Neutrality, I’d like the suggest that they’re focusing on the wrong thing. The reason Pai’s decision is the wrong one is not because the lack of net neutrality is, prima facie, a bad thing. Rather, it’s because we don’t have anything close to free market conditions in the U.S. when it comes to broadband.

[Commentary]  Once again, the [open Internet] rules are being rewritten.  Once again, the pitchforks and torches are in hand.  And once again, the only real and effective solution is being ignored:  legislation from Congress, versions of which have been floating around Capitol Hill for almost a decade. 

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission’s outmoded structure contributes to employee dissatisfaction. The issues before the FCC contemplate a converged world, but its siloed organizational structure limits the ability of staff not only to work across bureaus, but to think intelligently and conceptually.

In any event, new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai observes that the FCC’s employees are “rare combination of dedication, expertise, and collegiality.” Imagine what they could do if they actually enjoyed their jobs. To achieve his goals to “bring the benefits of the digital age to all Americans”, Chairman Pai must overcome deeply entrenched corporate interests and pro-regulatory pessimism which resists change. But if his courageous actions and dissents are any indication, Chairman Pai is a fearless and magnanimous leader who will make the FCC a great place to work again.

[Layton was part of President Trump’s FCC transition team; she is a visiting fellow at American Enterprise Institute]

[Commentary] Media outlets across the political spectrum reporting on Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s promotion have focused on a single issue—the FCC’s controversial 2015 open Internet rulemaking, which transformed Internet access providers into public utilities. In doing so, they have trivialized the very real and important issues facing the agency and its new Chairman. Much worse than that, they have badly conflated and misreported Pai’s views on network neutrality itself—an almost entirely separate topic. The how and why of this serious reporting failure is the real story here.

Nowhere has Pai indicated hostility to basic net neutrality principles themselves, or disavowed his repeated pledge “to protect them going forward.” Nor has he ever proposed to “kill,” “destroy,” “gut,” “end” or “hate” those protections.

[Larry Downes is the Project Director, Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy.]

[Commentary] The changing of administrations offers a fresh chance for Washington to rethink network neutrality. While it’s easy to find faults with the prior regime, it is hard to articulate an alternative that would satisfy more than a narrow constituency. The replacement to Title II must balance the dual objectives of stimulating investment at the core and the edges of the Internet. With ironclad protections that ban new business models, investment at the core can be discouraged. Indeed, the imposition of Title II in early 2015 has been associated with ISP investment declines in recent studies by PPI and by USTelecom. Too little protection, including a naive reliance on antitrust enforcement, could threaten investment at the edge.

With this delicate balance in mind, an ideal regulatory regime for the Internet would embody three principles:
It would reject ex ante prohibitions of new business arrangements on the Internet, and instead embrace case-by-case review of allegations of discriminatory or exclusionary conduct;
It would reject asymmetric regulation of core and edge providers, and instead establish a forum for adjudicating complaints against any dominant platform provider, including Internet intermediaries and mobile operating systems; and
It would fill gaps in antitrust laws that leave upstart edge providers vulnerable.

[Hal Singer is a senior fellow at the George Washington University Institute of Public Policy]

[Commentary] President-elect Donald Trump’s advisors, along with leading Members of Congress and the agency’s two Republican Commissioners, have already made clear their first priority: to end the agency’s misguided intrusions into the Internet economy, and to reinstate policies that encourage continued private investment. A visionary plan to transform the agency into an effective 21st century enabler of continued digital innovation is sitting on the Commission’s shelf, just waiting to be dusted off.

Ironically, or not, it was written almost twenty years ago, under the direction of William Kennard, appointed to Chair the agency from 1997 to 2001 by Democratic President Bill Clinton. In two drafts prepared in 1999, Kennard’s Office of Plans and Policy laid out the design for a dramatically redesigned Commission. “The FCC as we know it today will be very different both in structure and mission,” the proposal said, transitioning over five years “from an industry regulator to a market facilitator.”

[Larry Downes is an Internet industry analyst and author on business strategies and information technology.]