In an excellent commentary in today’s Wall Street Journal, AEI visiting fellow and Entropy Economics LLC president Bret Swanson debunks “the two central contentions of ‘net neutrality’ fans, including President Obama, who want the Federal Communications Commission to regulate the Internet as a public utility.” Specifically, the myths of “lagging U.S. broadband and the specter of content blocking.”
Swanson proceeds to demonstrate that neither of those rationalizations for net neutrality or regulation of Internet service under laws enacted in the 1930s is true:
…the U.S. generates far more traffic per capita and per Internet user than any other major nation save South Korea, which is a vertical metropolis and thus easy to wire with fiber optics. U.S. traffic per capita is 2.1 times that of Japan and 2.7 that of Western Europe. Several years ago, U.S. and Canadian traffic measures were similar, but today the U.S. has raced ahead by 25%. The U.S. lead is similar in traffic per Internet user, which tends to reflect how intensely people use broadband and mobile connections. The U.S. outdoes its closest European rival, the U.K. by 57%. The U.S. outdoes all of Western Europe – the best comparison in terms of geography, population and economic development – by a factor of 2.5.”
He also rebuts the claim that U.S. broadband is comparatively slow or more expensive, and concludes that there’s no “problem” demanding an Obama Administration “fix”:
The U.S., with 4% of the world’s population, has 10% of its Internet users, 25% of its broadband investment and 32% of its consumer Internet traffic. The U.S. policy of Internet freedom has worked. Why does Washington want to intervene in a thriving market?”
It’s a good question, and an excellent piece.
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