Deborah Platt told attendees of the Progress & Freedom Foundation’s Aspen Summit: No industry-wide regulatory scheme should be imposed without first carefully weighing the costs, determining whether the greater harm occurs with or without regulation.
As a government enforcer, I have tried to live by the touchstone of the medical profession, ‘first, do no harm’, she said.
According to Platt, current regulations, enforced by government agencies such as the FTC and Federal Communications Commission, should be enough to prevent any anticompetitive behavior when it comes to internet access.
We should not forget that we already have in place an existing law enforcement and regulatory structure. Before adding to it, we should determine that the current scheme is insufficient to address potential issues as they may arise in this area, she said.
The net neutrality debate has been raging all year in the US, since senior management at newly merged telco powerhouses made it clear they planned to double-bill online service providers for premium access to end users.
Carriers say companies providing heavy content such as video, music and voice over IP, which already pay their own ISPs’ hefty bandwidth bills, should also pay to have their traffic prioritized, so it reaches the end users faster.
Content providers are unsurprisingly against this, and have been lobbying Washington DC for new laws to prevent such systems coming into place. Companies including Microsoft, Google and Yahoo are for such laws, while carriers and network equipment makers such as Cisco are against them.
There have been a number of attempts at legislating net neutrality in the US in recent months, but all have failed, albeit narrowly in some cases.
Platt remarked that it was surprising how quickly some of these pro-legislation companies started asking for government intervention.
I rarely meet a person in business who does not profess support for a free market, who does not long for the government to keep its nose out of the business, she said. But nonetheless, when fear of marketplace disadvantage arises, there is a tendency to quickly turn to government to seek protection or help.
According to Platt, the free market, coupled with existing laws, should be able to prevent ISPs limiting or degrading access to valuable services. In fact, she said, more laws could be harmful, preventing new access technologies or services.
We should look at whether any net neutrality or similar legislation could have the effect of entrenching existing broadband platforms and market positions, as well as adversely affecting the levels and areas of future innovation and investment in this industry, she said. The end result could be a diminution, rather than an increase, in competition, to the detriment of consumers.
