Chip Bok's Bokbluster

President Obama says he wants the “strongest possible rules to protect net neutrality”. He wants the FCC to run the internet like a public utility and guarantee that everyone has equal access. That would mean a big outfit like Netflix couldn’t buy up bandwidth and squeeze out virtuous freeloaders like .. um .. Bokbluster.com.

So far so good. Except it might also mean service providers would lose an incentive to build more bandwidth.Holman Jenkins in the WSJ says Obama “has no idea what incentives guide the behavior of broadband carriers, or how regulation might affect the ability of intelligent networks to deliver a growing and potentially infinite variety of services in the future over a common digital network”.

Ted Cruz calls the plan “ObamaCare for the internet”. He says it will put the feds in charge of internet pricing, products, and service. PolitifFact.com looked into Cruz’s claim. They rated if “half true” for whatever that’s worth. I think PolitiFact’s real value is in the reporting it does. Here’s PolitiFact’s explanation of Net Neutrality.

Update:

And here’s Paul Greenberg noticing that AT&T is pulling back an investment in fiber optic cable due to Obama’s 1930’s mindset on the internet.

REUTERS — AT&T will pause investments to bring fiber connections to 100 cities until U.S. regulators iron out rules to regulate how Internet service providers manage their Web traffic, the company’s chief executive told investors Wednesday. “We can’t go out and invest that kind of money deploying fiber to 100 cities not knowing under what rules those investments will be governed,” CEO Randall Stephenson said.