Mobile Future, a group pushing for marketplace, rather than
government, spurs to broadband deployment and adoption, says proposed net
neutrality regulations will put a damper on jobs and revenue in the broadband
sector.
That is according to a study by Brattle Group economist
Coleman Bazelon and paid for by the group, which includes AT&T, various
chambers of commerce, the Hispanic Technology & Telecommunications
Partnership and others who have registered reservations about the FCC's plans.
According to Bazelon, the FCC's proposed expansion and
codification of network neutrality guidelines, which would include a specific
rule on nondiscrimination, could slow revenue growth in the broadband business
by a sixth over the next two years, and result in the loss of almost 15,000
jobs in 2011 alone, over a third of a million broadband jobs in the next ten
years, and over 1.4 million jobs in the greater economy.
"The analysis finds that any constraining form of
network neutrality regulations would limit broadband expansion, thereby
limiting job creation and growth in the wireless sector," says Bazelon.
If Bazelon's name sounds familiar, it may be because he is
the same economist whose study of thevalue of reclaimed broadcast spectrum to the government and in the hands of
wireless carriers was submitted to the FCC to support reclaiming it from
broadcasters.
"This industry funded research is based on deeply flawed assumptions, and amount to nothing more than anti-net neutrality propaganda," said Free Press Research Director Derek Turner. Free Press has long argued that marketplace self-regulation is not sufficient to protect a free and open Internet. "The study's central premise that net neutrality rules would lower broadband industry revenues by one-sixth over the next decade incorrectly attributes the past impacts of telephone regulations on DSL growth, and erroneously assumes that light-touch net neutrality rules would have the same overstated impact. The Mobile Future study also completely ignores the practical reality that we have for years, and are now, living in a world of defacto-net neutrality, where revenues are soaring. AT&T was put under a strict net neutrality regime as a result of their merger with Bell South, and their revenues saw healthy growth during that time," says Turner.
"With network neutrality, content innovation will prosper, furthering demand for high-capacity, ubiquitous Internet access, which in turn will stimulate ISP investment and increase the need for and the value of more jobs," he said. "But without network neutrality, ISPs will be incentivized to reduce network investments and jobs, in order to make congestion the norm."
