In a new tactic apparently aimed at tying the issue of unemployment to FCC control of the web. In this effort, Julius Genachowski will point out that having the government ride shotgun on the internet will save (create?) jobs.
Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski will join his fellow Commission members Wednesday to testify on net neutrality in front of the House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee. In prepared remarks obtained by Hillicon, Genachowski argues the FCC’s net neutrality framework is a “light touch” approach that creates jobs and promotes competition among private firms without stifling innovation.
In her testimony, Republican Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker calls the FCC’s move on net neutrality “the wrong policy and the wrong priority.” Baker said it is the Congress’ job to create a national policy and the FCC exceeded its statutory authority.
So just how many jobs could we expect to reap from the implementation of net neutrality as currently envisioned? According to one recent study, it’s a pretty big number. Sadly, it’s also a negative number.
How devastating would this impact be? The paper claims that wireless and wireline broadband could suffer huge investment losses as a consequence of the rules. A ten percent drop in investment could rob the United States of 502,000 jobs with a $62 billion impact on its Gross Domestic Product. Three times that decline could punish the economy with a loss of 604,000 jobs and $80 billion in GDP loss.
“Despite FCC assertions to the contrary, history suggests that the Commission is incapable of micromanaging a dynamic sector via regulatory fiat and that such action results in consumer welfare and economic losses,” the study asserts.
Most of this is still guesswork, but there are trends identified in the study which certainly make sense. But more to the point, the real question of net neutrality boils down to a battle of basic freedoms vs. the free market.
Net neutrality proponents argue that the web should remain “free range” – a wild west where ideas, speech and commerce can flourish without oppression or restriction. It’s an attractive idea, and one which I’ve taken a look at myself in the past. Unfortunately, the analogy breaks down when we apply it to the internet.
Public lands, such as still remain, certainly should be free to everyone to enjoy, be it for hunting, fishing, hiking camping, etc. And the expense for those lands is equally shared by all through their joint investment in the government at all levels.
The internet, however, is not a pristine field of God given land in the mountains. It’s a high technology network which was crafted by the hand of man. And while we may think of it as an omnipresent web of opportunity, each step in the line involves hardware and software that somebody has to pay for, install and maintain. The larger the load put on the system, the more the demand cost rises.
To a certain extent, much of this can be written off as overhead since returns on investment are realized through other channels, but as the system expands and the price of maintaining it increases apace, those paying for the infrastructure obviously have some say in what is charged for its use.
In the end, that’s all it really comes down to – public land vs. private property. And the internet has a lot more of the latter than the former.
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