Is the free market making net neutrality obsolete?

posted at 11:03 am on June 16, 2011 by Jazz Shaw
[ Congress ]   

One of the chief worries expressed by proponents of net neutrality legislation is that web service providing fat cats would play favorites, take control of content, and restrict speech while socking it to everyone with huge service fees. What this concern doesn’t take into account is that users – both private consumers and corporate interests – really don’t like getting shoddy, limiting, expensive service, and when consumers are unhappy a market opportunity arises. Let’s face it, business abhors a vacuum even more than mother nature.

There were already plenty of complaints. Tech guru Nate Anderson cited the skyrocketing cost of Comcast’s 105 Mbps service in Chicago. ($199.95 per month? Are you kidding me?) Subscribers to Jim Geraghty’s Morning Jolt newsletter saw him complaining just this week about Comcast being completely unavailable Monday night and most of Wednesday, impacting his ability to do his job.

So obviously we should get the federal government in here to straighten things out, right? Or just maybe the market will generate something better – not to mention more quickly – and offer consumers a chance to vote with their feet and their wallets. Oh, wait… I think it already happened.

California ISP may render “Net Neutrality” laws unnecessary

Last week, Santa Rosa-based Internet service provider Sonic.net rolled out a blazing fast new fiber optic network that will provide Sonoma County residents with the fastest residential Internet in the United States at an extremely competitive price. Sonic.net’s new offering blasts a hole in the arguments of “Net Neutrality” proponents who fear that ISPs will raise prices and limit quality Internet access without government regulation.

Sonic.net’s fastest service package will be 1Gbps (gigabits per second) at only $70 a month, and will include two phone lines and unlimited long distance calls. It will also offer a 100 megabit per second connection for $40 a month, which will include one phone line and unlimited long distance calling.

Amazing how that works, isn’t it? But, just in case the market tending to its own woes fails to dampen the enthusiasm in Washington for a nanny state solution, House GOP leadership is taking another crack at backing down the FCC using the power of the purse.

House Republicans are trying for a second time to kill the FCC’s net neutrality rules by denying enforcement funding.

The House Appropriations Committee released a draft of its FY12 Financial Services Appropriations bill Wednesday with language that would prohibit money for the agency’s Open Internet Order.

Republicans say the FCC rules amount to government overregulation of the Internet. But net neutrality supporters were quick to criticize the GOP’s move.

“The legislation the majority wrote would allow the largest telecommunications companies to reshape the Internet in their own image, favoring some and disadvantaging others,” Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said in a statement.

Hey, Gigi. You might want to sign up for one of those new Sonic.net accounts. It might save you a whole lot of time, embarrassment and heartburn.

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