Kessler on Network Neutrality: Internet Wrecking Ball

Andy Kessler makes the case in the WSJ that the best path to "an open and innovative Internet is not sneaky technical fixes nor more rules and regulations and bureaucracies to enforce them. The Internet will only expand based on competitive principles, not socialist diktat." Eliminate the barriers to competitive networks, and focus on a "policy to help cut a path for more competition, rather than protecting incumbents...." Nut graph:

This is the essence of the Ed Markey's (D., Mass.) Orwellian-named Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008, which would foist network neutrality on the wild and woolly Internet. The Federal Communications Commission is holding a public hearing today at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Mass., to build the case for the ill-conceived idea of preventing, as Mr. Markey's bill would, network operators from using technologies that may favor one application over another.

It's a bad idea because the only thing Mr. Markey's bill will preserve is mediocrity via the lack of competition, and full employment for regulators micromanaging a business whose very innovation comes from the lack of rules. With net neutrality, there will be no new competition and no incentives for build outs. Bandwidth speeds will stagnate, and new services will wither from bandwidth starvation.

Read it here.