This week an industry-funded study from New York Law School generated some misleading news about Network Neutrality and broadband investment. Though we have shown over and over again that Net Neutrality will boost innovation and economic growth and spark job creation, we know all too well that Telco lobbies and industry groups would have us believe that the FCC’s plan to bring Americans universal affordable broadband and protect the open Internet is somehow bad for business.

The Entropy/NY Law School study is just another attempt to muddle the debate over Net Neutrality. Like many similar industry efforts , its main conclusion is built on assumptions that have no real evidence.

In the study, the authors conclude that Net Neutrality will have a major negative impact on jobs and GDP. This conclusion is based on their unfounded observations that this policy will greatly reduce investment in broadband networks. But the reality is that Net Neutrality encourages investment by discouraging carriers from profiting from artificial scarcity.

In fact, a strong pro-business argument been made by number of academics including NYU economics and law professors. Nicholas Economides of the NYU Stern School of Business studies the economics of networks and specializes in telecommunications. He has written that the "amazing success" of the Internet "has been based on its openness, ubiquity and non-discrimination." "So, when the global communications network grows by leaps and bounds and spurs tremendous innovation," Economides asks, "why change its traditional rules?"

Other academic studies and much of the tech sector – companies that have paid close attention to the issue and understand the cultural, technological and financial necessity of keeping the Internet open - have laid out pro-business arguments for Net Neutrality as well.

Though the authors of the industry-funded study are quick to assert that Net Neutrality will harm investment, they provide no empirical evidence for this assumption. In the study it is just assumed that Net Neutrality will lead to massive harm because this policy will prevent network operators from charging content providers for quality of service – or to prioritize traffic in congested networks.

This ignores the now well-understood reality, that Free Press Research Director S. Derek Turner has clearly laid out: a "pay-for-play" pricing scheme is dependent upon carriers not investing in their networks in order to make congestion the norm. The absence of Net Neutrality rules actually creates an incentive for carriers to not invest adequately in their networks – and drag the U.S. even further behind in international broadband rankings.

So, the absence of Net Neutrality would allow carriers to A) save money by not investing in their networks and B) create a new pricing scheme that creates higher barriers to entry, discourages innovation and leaves consumers footing the bill. Somehow the Entropy/NYU study misses these key points.

Furthermore, Turner has explained how Net Neutrality’s impact on the economy is key to job growth:

The online innovators and startups are the companies that rely most on the certainty an open Internet provides. These companies, and future startups, will provide job growth critical to the U.S. economy. Without Net Neutrality, we will have less job growth in these promising young businesses, while Internet service providers continue their trend of layoffs, higher prices and diminishing investment levels in their networks.

Considering the mountain of evidence to the contrary, we hope that policymakers and the public will ignore this misleading industry-funded study and not allow it to cloud the debate over protecting the open Internet.