The U.S. government just closed an auction with bids totalling nearly $45 billion for more spectrum to connect the nation’s hundreds of millions of wireless subscribers. These open auctions reflected the light-touch regulatory approach that has helped fuel the United States’ rapid emergence as the world’s leading innovation economy.
Now, the U.S. government stands on the brink of charting an even more momentous course—this time in the wrong direction. Leveraging off the near-universal support for an open Internet, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is beginning to circulate his plan to “save” the Internet by subjecting it to a regulatory framework written decades ago for rotary telephones—reclassifying the primary engine of our modern economy as a lumbering, industrial-age public utility. With the President putting his own political capital behind this push, the Commission is expected to vote along party lines to support this move at its Feb. 26 meeting.
{mosads}Domestically, there’s plenty of precedent indicating how this story will go. Regulated utilities aren’t poster-children for innovation. They don’t have the most satisfied consumers or pioneering services.
But internationally, this is uncharted territory that is equally fraught with risk. Many proponents of Title II believe they are wielding this substantial regulatory stick in the name of promoting democratic ideals. Yet those abroad who are no friends of free speech or the right to organize and peacefully protest could use these same tools for more nefarious purposes. In short, a U.S. policy reversal signaling greater government intervention in the Internet could be taken as a green light by less-than-upstanding regimes to deepen their own hands-on approach. “Not so!” say senior officials in the Obama administration. As they explained to me, they have not yet heard a single official from countries like Russia or China express any such intentions.
But this is cold comfort.
We can continue to have an open Internet without making such an extreme over-correction. In last year’s Verizon v. FCC decision, two of President Clinton’s nominees to the D.C. Circuit – Judges David Tatel and Judith Rogers – set out a framework under which the FCC could adopt substantial open Internet requirements without reclassifying. Less than a week before President Obama announced his support for the Title II approach in November, The Wall Street Journal reported that Chairman Wheeler preferred a less heavy-handed path.
Yet here we are.
No serious participant in the open Internet debate disagrees with the idea that Internet service providers should not be permitted to block or throttle traffic or improperly extract additional payments for access based on content, nationality or specific end-users. From that common ground of agreement, it is incumbent on our leaders to chart a more constructive path forward—for U.S. consumers and innovators, as well as for our nation’s global leadership and influence.
The world is watching our net neutrality debate. For two decades, the U.S. has led the charge in advancing a flexible, light-touch, consumer-centric and innovation-enabling policy stewardship of the Internet. The results speak for themselves—some of the most life-enhancing and economy-advancing progress our nation has ever known.
With the exception of the highly politicized Title II debate, this Administration has advanced many positive and progressive broadband policies. I hope this past may yet be prologue, and that the White House, the FCC, Congress and the innovation community can work together to achieve targeted, effective and sustainable open Internet protections both at home and abroad that are based on sound facts, sound policy and sound law.
Mobile Future Chair Spalter, a technology executive and former senior federal government national security official, leads a coalition of technology companies/stakeholders dedicated to increasing investment and innovation in the burgeoning U.S. wireless sector.