The Internet is a vast collection of mostly privately owned networks that have agreed to exchange traffic for the mutual benefit of their users. The history of the Internet is of these mostly private actors naturally organizing themselves and their networks outside of the scope and control of government, and in some cases despite attempts of governments to prevent them from doing so.
The Internet thus is not and has never been a centrally planned, top-down, government-directed mechanism. Rather, the Internet represents a triumph of freedom and markets.
The fact that our private broadband infrastructure was built largely from private risk capital with almost no demand on the taxpayer is a strength, not a weakness. Government does not need to spend money in markets where there is already private economic vitality.
But some activists hate our mostly capitalist-owned broadband infrastructure because they think they would do a better job of running things than the owners themselves. They want to determine who offers broadband, how much they charge, and how traffic is managed on these networks. They thus want government to have a greater hand in the broadband industry, because if the government controls the infrastructure, that means the activists get to control the infrastructure, because they’ve perfected the art of influencing government.
These activists ignore the great success story of the broadband rollout in the United States and point to higher broadband penetration rates in some other countries, as if Americans want to live in tiny apartments in giant concrete bunkers with government broadband pipes on which we can play computer games. Population density accounts for most of the differences in penetration rates between the U.S. and other such countries, but it should not be lost on policymakers that these higher penetration rates were accomplished through massive use of taxpayer dollars.
As Congress and the administration begin to consider their approach to broadband policy, new federal policies should be designed to leverage and to harness the strength of this market-driven rollout, rather than seeking to undo it for the sake of activist ideologues. We’re doing a great job in the U.S. of rolling out broadband in a demand-driven, taxpayer-friendly way, regardless of the rabble-rousing of malcontents.