FCC Proposal Gets Blasted by CEI

On Thursday, Oct. 22, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would put government, rather than consumers and competing enterprises, at the helm of the Internet’s future. FCC Commissioners contemplate this action with no authority from Congress.

Federal agencies should not dictate business models or discriminate against infrastructure providers, argues Wayne Crews, vice president for policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a public interest group dedicated to free enterprise and limited government.

 “The FCC should steadfastly resist politically driven business and pressure group demands for special treatment of particular elements of the communications sector,” Crews says. “The FCC’s willingness to erect barriers to the creation of infrastructure wealth suggests a disdain for future consumer welfare in the digital economy and for genuinely liberalized communications markets.”

The CEI’s information policy analyst, Ryan Radia, says that openness mandates constrain innovation at the core and limit broadband availability: “Competing Internet providers shouldn’t have to get permission from the FCC to manage their networks.”