Friday, July 29, 2016

Eventually, Net Neutrality Rules Will Not be Needed

The argument for regulation of communications services of any type always is justified on the basis of scarcity: that some product or service is supplied by too few suppliers, on too limited a basis, to allow competition to act as the regulator.

Eliminate scarcity and the argument for government regulation goes away. Eventually, even network neutrality rules justified on the basis of scarcity (a few ISPs are so powerful they can shape or limit competition) is going to go away.

Huge amounts of new spectrum; including 29 gigaHertz of new wireless communications capacity, as much as seven gigaHertz to be made available on an unlicensed basis; new competition from Google Fiber, municipal networks and independent ISPs; new economics of fixed wireless; spectrum sharing and new next-generation mobile networks are going to eliminate scarcity.

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