Presidential hopefuls Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have decided to celebrate the one year anniversary of the FCC's net neutrality rules -- by once again trying to kill them. Cruz and Rubio have joined six other Senators in pushing the new Restoring Internet Freedom Act (pdf), which would dismantle the rules, walk-back the FCC's Title II reclassification of ISPs as common carriers, and prevent the FCC from trying to pass net neutrality rules in the future. You know, for the benefit of the American consumer.
In a
statement posted to the Rubio website, the Presidential hopeful states the new law is necessary because the FCC's "burdensome" net neutrality rules are destroying innovation, diversity, and network investment:
quote:
“The Internet has always been one of the best models of the free market,” said Rubio. “There are low barriers to entry, back and forth communication between consumers and providers, and a rapid evolution of ideas. “Through burdensome regulations and tight control like the net neutrality rule, the government only hinders accessibility and the diversity of content,” added Rubio. “Consumers should be driving the market, and we can help by encouraging innovation, incentivizing investment, and promoting the competitive environment this industry needs."
Right. A few problems with that statement. One, the
telecom market specifically is not free. It's a collection of duopolists that pay state and federal lawmakers to protect their uncompetitive stranglehold over the last mile after a generation of unaccountable subsidies and rampant cronyism. Two, the rules aren't "burdensome," since by and large the FCC hasn't bothered to enforce them, which is why companies like Comcast are happily using
usage caps and
zero rating to violate neutrality and give their own services an advantage against Netflix.
And while it's a perfectly sensible position to argue that broadband competition should make net neutrality rules unnecessary in an ideal world (as in, ISPs couldn't engage in bad behavior if customers had alternative broadband providers to switch to), by and large most politicians opposing net neutrality aren't willing to upset the nation's most powerful telecom operators (AT&T, Verizon, Comcast) in order to make that actually happen.
As a result we wind up with efforts like this one that aim to walk back one of the biggest consumer protection efforts in the last fifteen years (which, it should be reiterated, actually has
broad bipartisan support), but no substantive follow up efforts to bring real broadband competition to bear. This usually walks hand in hand with pretending the broadband market has no shortcomings whatsoever.