Alfred Kahn on network neutrality

I, obviously agree djf

Begin forwarded message:

From: Patrick Ross <[email protected]>
Date: November 1, 2006 9:05:02 AM EST
To: [email protected]
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