ISPs are Not the Big Internet Problem

Among the disingenuous arguments raised about network neutrality is that it somehow “saves internet freedom.” It does not. The heart of the network neutrality argument is that internet service providers should be barred from offering any quality of service features for consumer internet access services, on the theory that any other policy would allow ISPs to degrade service on their networks, while creating “value added” services that run faster.

Ignore for the moment that fixed network speeds increased about 38 percent in 2018 alone; that with 5G delivering an order of magnitude faster speeds; with new low earth orbit satellite constellations launching; with new ways to deploy fast fixed wireless access networks; with the number of ISPs actually growing; and that you would be extremely hard pressed to find any actual instances of ISPs deliberately building “crappy” networks that run slow, just so they can try and upsell.

Ignore the coming era of edge computing that will make network responsiveness even higher. Ignore Amazon’s entry into the ISP business; Google’s existing operations and Facebook’s satellite and other ISP operations.

Every public policy has private interest implications. Net neutrality essentially protects Google, Facebook and others from potential underlying cost pressures, even as all major app providers themselves pay to “speed up” their own services, using content delivery networks.

All those firms win when “everybody” has internet access, of good quality and low price. Net neutrality rules are viewed as ways to promote such outcomes. U.S. regulators never have allowed ISPs to block or degrade consumer internet access to all lawful applications, period.

So net neutrality cannot be about preserving consumer access to lawful applications, despite the breathless rhetoric. A fair assessment would be that the danger to consumer welfare comes from the content and application sphere these days: privacy violations; excessive sales of user data; biased filtering policies; selective censorship and so forth. None of those ailments are caused by ISPs.

Internet access keeps getting better, and rapidly. The era of 5G is going to provide extraordinary low latency and quality bandwidth at prices that are low, and dropping, in terms of price per bit and even often in real terms (adjusted both for inflation and different consumer choices).