The webinar, hosted by conservative nonprofit Committee for Justice, featured comments from Roslyn Layton, visiting scholar with the American Enterprise Institute. Layton claimed the FCC made the right decision repealing its 2015 net neutrality rules because hundreds of Internet service providers have voluntarily waived cancellations and fees during the COVID-19 crisis.
“We have the evidence that we need that there is not the systematic harm that necessitates this kind of regime,” Layton said.
To date, more than 700 companies have taken the FCC’s Keep Americans Connected pledge. The pledge came as a recommendation, not as a mandate, from the FCC, as the organization no longer has the oversight power granted by the 2015 rules.
Will Rinehart, senior research fellow at the Center for Growth and Opportunity, said it’s hard to say exactly how the 2015 rules would have affected the current situation.
One thing’s for sure, however: the FCC oversight granted by the 2015 rules created a lot of unrest among companies. For example, under the rules, the FCC could’ve theoretically started regulating how much companies can charge for Internet service. Rinehart could see that type of regulation negatively impacting companies’ flexibility to provide waivers during a crisis.
Matt Wood, vice president of policy and general counsel for Free Press, said the FCC could have regulated rates under the 2015 rules, but that doesn’t mean it would have. Wood added that companies have an “irrational fear” that they wouldn’t be able to operate under FCC oversight.
“The trajectory over the last 40 years has been to deregulate rates,” Wood said.
To Wood’s point, FCC commissioners ardently rejected a plan to regulate cable rates in 2007.
In regard to Layton’s suggestion that companies have shown that they act in customers’ best interests, Wood said most U.S. citizens would laugh at Layton’s notion, which is “ideologically driven and untethered from reality.” Wood admits that, as of now, there isn’t hard scientific evidence of a significant uptick in net neutrality violations since the 2015 rules were repealed in 2017. Rinehart further pointed out that certain customer-related issues with Internet companies may not necessarily fall into the “net neutrality bucket.”
Yet in Wood’s eyes, customer complaints about connectivity appear to be growing. “We have anecdotes, and I think they’re meaningful ones,” he said.
The Plain Dealer reported earlier this month that some people’s Internet connections have been cut in the Cleveland, Ohio, area despite the pledge. And just two days ago, NBC confirmed that people across the country have been disconnected in certain cases. During a time when telemedicine might be the difference between life and death, such interruptions appear notable.
In an email to Government Technology, Katharine Trendacosta, lead policy analyst for the Electric Frontier Foundation, said the repeal of the 2015 rules signaled that “we should be at the mercy of these ISPs, even during an emergency.”
“Situations such as Verizon not offering help to low-income people left behind on their DSL network is but one example of a failure that currently no federal agency can investigate,” Trendacosta said. “Students have been sent home and the FCC has no legal power to make sure ISPs keep all students connected.”
For Wood, the FCC should have the authority to address such issues. “That’s the crux of the debate between us and the industry,” Wood said.
Rinehart, though, believes oversight should come from something that Congress does, as giving the FCC “carte blanche” makes companies want to fight.
Another key part of the 2015 rules debate is whether such rules would lead to less innovation and investment in broadband networks. Layton addressed this argument in a blog post last month.
“We should thank our lucky stars that Title II net neutrality regulations were repealed by the FCC in 2017,” Layton wrote. “In doing so, the US avoided the fate of much of Europe today, where broadband networks are strained and suffering from a lack of investment and innovation.”
Although Rinehart does believe the 2015 rules would have led to a “slightly different place when it comes to development and deployment,” he questioned comparing U.S. network investment to European network investment. Europe doesn’t need as much deployment due to different consumer demands.
“Europeans don’t watch television at the rate Americans watch television,” Rinehart said.
Wood also rejected Layton’s comparison of the U.S. to Europe. Moreover, Wood said broadband investment decreased for certain companies with the 2015 rules in place, but one had to look closely at why a particular company decreased investment.
For instance, Wood said AT&T invested less in broadband when the 2015 rules were active because of the increased efficiencies of the technology that it had already invested in. AT&T, however, didn’t represent what was going on with most companies, according to Free Press research.
“In the aggregate, most of them increased their spending, despite their complaints,” Wood said.
