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Net Neutrality: Why ISPs Need More Oversight
Although it is still playing out, Barack Obama's public endorsement this fall of "Net neutrality" may well turn out to be one of the signal events of 2014, as far as government policy and technology are concerned. And while the president's support for an open, egalitarian Internet does much to steer policy on this issue in the right direction, the government could, and should, go further in regulating ISPs in the same way it does public utilities. Here's why.
4 Min Read
Although it is still playing out, Barack Obama's public endorsement this fall of "Net neutrality" may well turn out to be one of the signal events of 2014, as far as government policy and technology are concerned. And while the president's support for an open, egalitarian Internet does much to steer policy on this issue in the right direction, the government could, and should, go further in regulating Internet service providers (ISPs) in the same way it does public utilities. Here's why.
Most utility services, such as water, electricity and sewer lines, in the United States are delivered either directly by government entities, or by prviate companies subject to government regulation. In either case, the oversight ensures (theoretically, at least) these services, which are essential for maintaining a basic standard of living, are fairly and equally distributed.
Internet access may not be quite as singularly essential for modern life as energy and clean water, but it's increasingly vital for all sorts of civic and personal activities. At a minumum, it's hard to argue that Internet service is any less crucial for many people than telephone lines, which are regulated in most places.
The current president's commitment to Net neutrality, which means preventing content providers and ISPs from privileging certain parts of the Internet over others within data and bandwidth pipelines, promises to help make sure that people are not denied Internet access based on the type of content they access or how much money they pay. But it doesn't entail actually regulating ISPs like other utility companies, even though doing would make sense for several reasons:
In contrast to the early days of the Web, when small, independent ISPs proliferated, a handful of huge providers control Internet access for most people today. The lack of competition within this market—which promises to grow only worse if companies like TIme Warner and Comcast merge—harms consumers and, in the absence of policies that would promote more competition between ISPs, invites government regulation to keep prices and services fair.
Unlike water and electricity, where the amount consumers pay depends on how much they use, ISPs currently get away with charging uninformed users for untold amounts of bandwidth that most don't need. Few households require 100Mb of bandwidth. Yet that's the service plan Verizon repeatedly insisted I should purchase when I tried (unsuccessfully, because Verizon's customer service department proved to be a disorganized mess, but that's a story for another day) to sign up for FiOS this fall. That would be like the water company telling me I should purchase a plan that would allow me to use up to 100 million gallons of water per month, and charge me the same rate regardless of whether my actual usage comes anywhere close to that amount. Regulating ISPs could help prevent them from taking advantage of consumers' lack of understanding of what "megabit" means, for example, and force the companies to adopt cost schedules more similar to those of public utility companies.
Years of attempts to expand broadband options in rural markets have paid limited dividends, which is a large part of the reason the United States ranks so poorly on an international scale regarding Internet access speed. Regulation could provide a stronger push for ISPs to bite the bullet and expand infrastructure into more remote areas, just like electric and water utilities have had to do to bring their services beyond densely populated cities.
Protecting Internet access has now become an issue of concern for national security, yet private entities are free to do whatever they like with the infrastructure that delivers Internet service. If not government regulation, at least stricter oversight would help shore up vulnerabilities in this area.
To be sure, governments do poor, inefficient work much of the time. Private enterprise should dominate in many situations. But governments manage to ensure the fair, equitable and reliable delivery of utility services across the country, and as Internet access becomes as important as water, electricity and telephones, it's time they do the same on that front by reining in the mega-ISPs and making sure the latter act in the interests of all of the customers they serve.
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