This is the sixth and final post in a series of posts by Chris Riley, Free Press Policy Counsel, to summarize the primary policy recommendations made in recent comments submitted to the Federal Communications Commission in its open Internet proceeding. Today’s topic: why open Internet rules are in the public interest.

In addition to our assertion that protecting the open Internet will not harm network investment, the subject of my last post, our filing with the FCC makes many other compelling and detailed arguments in support of strong rules to protect Internet openness. These arguments center around one idea too often lost in this debate: The Internet is not AT&T’s Internet, nor Google’s Internet, nor Free Press’ Internet – it’s the public’s Internet. The Internet is not a widget, but public infrastructure upon which ever larger parts of our society are being built. There is no economic substitute. The Internet is a public resource, and a public good.

Even if Google and Verizon can find ways to get along, the aim of communications policy should not be to referee industry disputes, but to identify and establish policies that best promote the public interest. And to defend the public’s interest in the public’s Internet, it must be kept open. The FCC must adopt strong and clear rules, without loopholes, that establish lasting protections for the current environment and for the future.

• Keeping the Internet open is in the public interest because it will promote competition among network operators, among content producers, among application developers and among service operators. If network operators are unable to maintain their market dominance through anticompetitive protections of their existing voice and video business models, they will have more incentive to offer a quality, inexpensive broadband Internet access service to gain and retain customers. We need more than open Internet rules to turn our nation’s broadband duopoly into a competitive market, of course. But preserving the open Internet is a necessary, if not sufficient, condition.
• Keeping the Internet open will increase deployment and spur adoption. It will promote investment and competition for networks and for applications and content. Investment drives more rapid and higher capacity broadband deployment into unserved and underserved communities. Competition lowers prices and improves service quality for all consumers. Investment, competition and an open platform for innovation will increase the diversity and availability of online content and applications, increasing the Internet’s value for would-be subscribers and encouraging adoption. As some have pointed out, the alternative is essentially the telecom equivalent of trickle-down economics.
• Keeping the Internet open will create jobs. From 1996 to 2004, when the telephone companies operated in an environment of regulation and competition, their revenue and jobs curves tracked: When they made more money, they hired more people. But with deregulation (starting in 2005), these curves diverged. Since then, revenue at AT&T, Verizon and Qwest has steadily increased – yet the companies have shrunk, firing more employees and reducing relative investment levels. It’s time to reverse this trend. Open Internet rules will promote competition and investment, and therefore will encourage network operators to hire more people and build bigger networks, rather than enable them to continue to increase their profits through discriminatory behavior while reducing network investment.
• Keeping the Internet open will promote consumer choice. Although rules to preserve the open Internet will not give most consumers more than one or two choices for true broadband Internet access services, these rules will promote competition and investment that will help us eventually reach the goal of having many choices available. And in the meantime, they will protect one area of robust consumer choice on the Internet – the online market for content and applications. Failure to pass strong open Internet rules, or permitting loopholes in those rules, would permit network gatekeepers to leverage power into this space, and to stifle competition and consumer choice in the one Internet sector where it currently exists.
• Keeping the Internet open will promote innovation. Consumer choice and low barriers to entry for content and applications online create a market where no incumbents can rest on their laurels. We have seen the rise and fall of many major Internet companies that were too slow to innovate and adapt to the changing needs of their users. Protecting the open Internet will preserve this dynamic – but closing it would allow incumbents to use their tools and legal muscle to protect their business models against new and more innovative competitors. Comcast should not be permitted to block online video providers that compete with its cable television service, just as AT&T should not be allowed to interfere with VoIP software that threatens its voice business.
• Keeping the Internet open will promote free speech. Preserving the open Internet will ensure that users have few barriers to public expression, communication and association, through ever newer and more innovative media like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. No gatekeeper should be allowed to put a tax on the speech of Internet users.
• Keeping the Internet open will promote democracy. The open Internet is not just a forum for speech and commerce; it is part of democracy’s essential infrastructure. Governments connect with citizens through the open Internet, and the resulting two-way communications and public participation are reinvigorating and reshaping our democracy in new and exciting ways. We must not approach communications policy as though the Internet were just another economic product or service, or we will undermine that future.

If that sounds like a lot of reasons, well, it is. And the public has spoken – as of now, more than 150,000 people and dozens of organizations have told the FCC that they support strong rules to protect the open Internet. Join us as we fight to keep the Internet open, and to shape communications policy in the public interest.