Net Neutrality: A Voice of Reason

Joseph Laszlo | March 14, 2006, 01:49 PM

I go back and forth about net neutrality, I admit it. As a user of the Internet, I dread the end of the egalitarian, open network that we've all grown used to over the years. But as an analyst, I advise the big network providers on business strategy, and as the owners of the last mile, making money off that pipe is just good business.

The hysterical tone of many of the pro-net-neutrality camp doesn't help matters...I have extremely low tolerance for rhetoric about "the death of the Internet."

So it's refreshing, and persuasive, to read the New Yorker's excellent financial columnist, James Surowiecki, on the net neutrality issue this week.

While offline metaphors only imperfectly model online realities, Surowiecki's conclusion that "Increasingly, it seems likely that the Net will end up looking less like the highway system and more like a collection of Safeways" is reasonably apt, as well as being extremely clever.

I won't completely spoil his punchline, but I will say that I'm even more hesitant now about the idea that charging content providers for "fast lane" access to consumers is the best strategy for the continued growth of broadband adoption and the larger Internet economy. And if BellSouth's stat of $0.50/GB in per-consumer monthly bandwidth costs is correct, it's much more reasonable to recover any outsize bandwidth costs from offending consumers, not from content providers.