So the House majority and democrats in the Alaska senate want to get themselves into the internet regulation business, this time by forcing net neutrality on internet service providers (ISPs) here in Alaska. http://www.akleg.gov/basis/Bill/Text/30?Hsid=HB0277A
Net neutrality has been the wet dream of democrats for over a decade but went nowhere until O’Bama’s FCC on a party line vote decided to change federal law on the fly, and imposed it on an unwilling public without the consent of that public.
I do give democrats in the Alaska legislature credit for at least trying to impose their will via legislation.
What is net neutrality? At its core is the assumption that every bit of information transmitted over the internet is identical. So are all internet users (customers). The O’Bama FCC net neutrality (happily rolled back by the Trump FCC also via party line vote), demanded that any ISP cannot offer a premium service to one customer at a different cost than any other user. Additionally, all traffic through the ISP must be treated exactly the same way. https://www.dailywire.com/news/24004/everything-you-need-know-about-why-net-neutrality-harry-khachatrian
Big companies like Google have built their own internet infrastructure and supply content at the internet exchange points, bypassing most of the existing infrastructure. They love net neutrality because it strangles start-ups who do not have the resources to build their own global infrastructure and peer with end providers. The startups will have to pay the end providers as they don’t have the existing infrastructure to trade services with. To the big boys like Google, net neutrality is a way to limit competition from new startups.
Democrats also like net neutrality because it finally gives them a regulatory vehicle to censor traffic and web sites they don’t like. The big boys like Google, YouTube, Twitter, all censor conservative content and sites to a varying degree. This censorship will continue under net neutrality as it takes place within their corporate network infrastructure.
By treating every customer as equal, net neutrality absolutely prohibits ISPs from offering different packages to different users. For instance, the light surfer who does not do much more than surf the internet and exchange e-mails will be charged the same as the power user, an online gamer who also streams six hours of Netflix every night, even though video streaming and online gaming requires a significantly larger pipeline and quality of data stream than simple web page loading. It also prohibits ISPs from offering porn filtering as a service. And what about the growing business of backing up personal data to the cloud, something that is generally not time sensitive? Fairness? Hardly.
By getting in the middle of the marketplace, net neutrality proponents instantly stifle the ability of ISPs to tailor both their products and services, along with them their prices, to the needs and desires of their customers. They stifle the ability to innovate new services and prices.
As an aside, FCC regulations were the reason we had the black AT&T dial phone for decades. Deregulate and we see cellular, smart phones, tablets, and thousands of innovative products and services (many now called apps).
What is the value added here? Better yet, is there anyone in the State of Alaska you would trust to make those decisions for you? Think of one of Bill Walker’s democrat appointees deciding how your ISP works and what your internet connection delivers.
This is the identical thought process that gave us O’BamaCare. It was supposed to fix medical care for all the same reasons. In reality, it made it both more expensive and less responsive to individual needs and desires. It also all but halted medical innovation here in the US. It was passed because it put democrats in charge of those decisions. Do we really want to go there again?
I’m sure the democrats do. The rest of us, not so much.
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He is a small business owner and Information Technology professional.
