-By Scott Cleland
The unanimous passage of a new seven-year Internet Tax Moratorium, is powerful evidence of how far out of the political mainstream the net neutrality movement is.
The fact that everyone in Congress, from the right and the left, came together and supported extending the Internet tax ban for twice as long as Congress did in the past, proves unequivocally that political consensus is possible in Congress on mainstream Internet issues.
Moreover, the near unanimous passage of the 1996 Telecom Act by Congress was another powerful example of how the left and right could come together and agree overwhelmingly on sound Internet/communications policies like:
“…preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet… unfettered by Federal or state regulation;”
and
“To promote competition and reduce regulation in order to secure lower prices and higher quality services for America telecommunications consumers and encourage the rapid deployment of new telecommunications technologies.”
Sound mainstream policies can attract near unanimity in Congress — despite rampant partisanship.
If net neutrality was truly a long-standing “principle” of the Internet, like its proponents have claimed, it would attract strong political consensus.
The reason net neutrality is not consensus or in the political mainstream, is that: the term was only coined in 2002, over three decades after the Internet was developed, and it only became a legislative issue when Google funded MoveOn.org to create the SaveTheInternet Coalition in early 2006.
Net neutrality is far from a core principle of the Internet and far from consensus legislation.
If net neutrality was a mainstream consensus issue (and not a radical communal property agenda of MoveOn.org and a brilliant corporate welfare scheme by Google), why did all of the following official decision makers oppose net neutrality legislation/regulation when it came before them:
The FCC, the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the FTC, the DOJ and each of the state legislatures that looked at the issue: Michigan, Maryland and Maine?
Bottom line: The obvious conclusion is that net neutrality legislation/regulation is way outside the bounds of the political mainstream, because if it were indeed a mainstream issue, the political process would embrace it just like they just did in unanimously passing the Internet Tax Moratorium.
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Scott Cleland is one of nation’s foremost techcom analysts and experts at the nexus of: capital markets, public policy and techcom industry change. He is widely-respected in industry, government, media and capital markets as a forward thinker, free market proponent, and leading authority on the future of communications. Precursor LLC is an industry research and consulting firm, specializing in the techcom sector, whose mission is to help companies anticipate change for competitive advantage. Cleland is also Chairman of NetCompetition.org, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Precursor LLC and an e-forum on Net Neutrality funded by a wide range of broadband telecom, cable and wireless companies. He previously founded The Precursor Group Inc., which Institutional Investor magazine ranked as the #1 “Best Independent” research firm in communications for two years in a row. His latest op eds can be seen at www.precursorblog.com