[IP] Alfred Kahn on network neutrality
I, obviously agree djf
Begin forwarded message:
From: Patrick Ross <Pross@xxxxxxx>
Date: November 1, 2006 9:05:02 AM EST
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Alfred Kahn on network neutrality
Dave,
Thought you would like to know that the father of deregulation,
Alfred Kahn, has chimed in on net neutrality. PFF published an essay
by him yesterday that began as a comment he left on our blog. Anyone
who has flown or purchased a good transported on a truck has to be
thankful to him for deregulating the airline and trucking industries
under the Carter administration. With this piece, he was responding
to a blog I had written about how Democrat Bill Kennard had been
criticized for urging caution when dealing with network neutrality
legislation. Dr. Kahn’s piece, “A Democratic Voice of Caution on
Network Neutrality,” can be found here (http://www.pff.org/issues-
pubs/ps/2006/ps2.24voiceofcautiononnetneutrality.html ) and I’ll
paste in his opening:
The advocates of network neutrality have become distressingly,
stridently apocalyptic, rallying all good liberals against (the
following is a fair composite quote):
"those with the deepest pockets...corporations, special-interest
groups, and major advertisers, who decide what you get to see and how
much it costs, and especially the billion-dollar telephone and cable
companies that now dominate the business of providing broadband
connections to the public--who want to control what you read, see or
hear online... Major corporate sites would be able to pay the new
fees, while little-guy sites could be shut out."
Now wait just a minute.
I consider myself a good liberal Democrat. I played a leading role
under President Carter in the deregulation of the airlines (as
Chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board) and trucking (as Advisor to
the President on Inflation), against the almost unanimous opposition
of the major airlines and trucking companies and--let's be frank
about it--their strongest unions. Among our strongest allies were
Senator Ted Kennedy, Stephen (now Supreme Court Justice) Breyer, and
such organizations as Common Cause, Public Citizen, the Consumer
Federation of America and Southwest Airlines.
This is not the place to argue about the consequences of those
deregulations. What is unarguable is that airline deregulation has
saved travelers many billions of dollars annually and made air travel
affordable for people with modest means, just as we intended.
I have played an active role also as Chairman of the New York State
Public Service Commission and consistently, both before and after,
opposing the efforts of AT&T to induce the FCC and Congress to
protect its historical monopoly. I have also over the last half
century been a consistent public advocate of strong antitrust policy.
Our premise in all these efforts, in opposition to reactionaries and
special interests, on the one side, and to the indifference or scorn
of radicals, on the other, was that wherever it is feasible,
competition is a far better protector of the interest of both
consumers and content providers (think radio, television, motion
pictures and, now, the Internet) than government ownership or
regulation. In telecommunications, cable and telephone companies
compete increasingly with one another, and while the two largest
wireless companies, Cingular and Verizon, are affiliated with AT&T
and Verizon, respectively, some 97 percent of the population has at
least a third one competing for their business as well; and Sprint
and Intel have recently announced their plan to spend 3 billion
dollars on mobile Wi-Max facilities nationwide. Scores of
municipalities led by Philadelphia and San Francisco, are building
their own Wi-Fi networks. And on the horizon are the electric
companies, already beginning to use their ubiquitous power lines to
offer broadband--to providers of content, on the one side, and
consumers, on the other.
By far the most promising intensification of that competition is the
tens of billions of dollars that the phone companies themselves are
spending converting copper to fiber, which will enable them to offer
video programming pervasively, in direct competition with the cable
companies. Can anyone seriously believe that competition would be
forthcoming if those incumbents were still subject to public utility-
type regulation? Or prevented from surcharging the heaviest content
suppliers--the ones demanding the speediest possible access to
subscribers that those telco investments will make possible?
<snip>
Patrick Ross
Senior Fellow and VP-Communications & External Affairs
The Progress & Freedom Foundation
1444 Eye St. NW Suite 500, Washington, D.C. 20005
202-969-2945 (direct) | 202-680-2445 (mobile)
www.pff.org | ipcentral.info
For more see www.patrick-ross.com
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