Net Neutrality Rules Offer Insurance Policy for Internet, Wheeler Says

Wheeler said the FCC majority was not convinced that problems won’t occur, and any problems are “likely to be highly consequential.” The majority saw net neutrality rules as comparable to buying insurance, Wheeler said. “There is a low probability that you’ll get in an automobile crash,” he said. “But the state requires you to have insurance to protect the other person in case that low probability occurs. The same concept that applies to the Interstate applies to the Internet.”

ISPs have little to worry about from the rules, Wheeler said. “We have not precluded broadband providers from doing anything that, at least in the most recent round of pleadings, they indicated they intended to do,” he said. “Through the use of forbearance authority and after-the-fact regulatory tools, we have minimized any direct regulatory costs that a law abiding ISP would incur.”

The Internet “is the most powerful platform for innovation, commerce and free speech in human history” and commissioners faced a clear choice, Wheeler said. “We can have an open Internet policy that advances the interests of tens of thousands of innovators, and millions of Internet users; or we can have an Open Internet policy that advances the interests of a few powerful companies,” he said. “The choice is clear. And I’m proud that the Commission has made the right choice, adopting strong, sustainable, and sensible open Internet protections."

Ex-commissioner Robert McDowell said the car insurance metaphor doesn't hold up. McDowell is now at Wiley Rein, which represents telecom and other companies. “American Internet consumers​ were already protected by several federal and state laws, such as Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act,” McDowell told us. “But now the FTC 'insurance policy' has been cancelled due to the common carrier exemption.”

Auto insurance policies also don't require drivers to “ask the government, or insurance carriers, for permission before getting into their cars to drive,” McDowell said. “The net neutrality order does while applying up to 21 sections of Title II that have been litigated in the courts 1,245 times and within the FCC nearly 12,000 times. Just like existing laws that prevent potential anticompetitive conduct on the net, laws are already in place to govern drivers' behavior.” McDowell said the “new, expansive, redundant and confusing layer of rules isn't needed and will spawn a lifetime of confusing litigation and uncertainty."

There's a good reason Congress never authorized the FCC to be the insurance agency for the global Internet, said Larry Downes, project director at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy. “The FCC is not structured to respond quickly to rapidly changing technological environments,” he said. “Nor does it have the expertise to evaluate risk, design mechanisms for reducing that risk without chilling innovation and investment, or quickly deregulate when the risk expires on its own accord. Even with the best intentions, this is an agency run amok. Congress and the courts must rein it in, and soon.”

Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood fired back at critics of the rules. "It's a shame that some people will take Chairman Wheeler's neat auto insurance analogy and turn it into a flaming wreck,” he said. “The FCC is there to serve the public interest -- the hundreds of millions of businesses and people who rely on Internet access, not just the handful of companies who provide it,” Wood said. “The only thing about Title II that is causing any uncertainty and redundancy is the irrational and increasingly shrill campaign against this common sense law, as waged by cable and telecom companies and their favorite mouthpieces."