Some US internet service providers have proposed charging large
bandwidth users such as video publishers a premium for priority
access to customers. The popularity of video services has led to
worries that pressure on telecoms infrastructure will lead to
bandwidth shortages.
Alarmed at the prospect of publishers having to pay to have
their internet content accessed by internet users, some campaigners
have called for US legislation forcing all traffic to be treated
equally. This is called net neutrality.
"The FCC should be highly sceptical of calls to substitute
special economic regulation of the internet for free and open
competition enforced by the antitrust laws," said the DoJ's filing.
"Marketplace restrictions proposed by some proponents of 'net
neutrality' could in fact prevent, rather than promote, optimal
investment and innovation in the internet, with significant
negative effects for the economy and consumers."
The DoJ argued that unfettered market capitalism was the best
way to allocate the scarce bandwidth resources.
Free market competition drives scarce resources to their fullest
and most efficient use, spurring businesses to invest in and sell
as efficiently as possible the kinds and quality of goods and
services that consumers desire," it said.
"However well-intentioned, regulatory restraints can
inefficiently skew investment, delay innovation, and diminish
consumer welfare, and there is reason to believe that the kinds of
broad marketplace restrictions proposed in the name of 'neutrality'
would do just that with respect to the internet."
The DoJ said that the offer of "different levels of quality of
service at varying costs to content and application providers"
would "efficiently respond to market demands".
One group which does support more regulation of broadband
services, Public Knowledge, pointed out that while competition may
provide an answer, it does not always exist in the US market.
“Perhaps the DoJ does not recall that there is very little in
the way of market forces to protect consumers," said Gigi Sohn,
president of Public Knowledge. "Perhaps the Department has
forgotten that many consumers have little or no choice at all for
their high-speed broadband services. A more vigorous antitrust
analysis would have recognized there is a market failure and would
have resulted in conditions on the AT&T takeover of BellSouth
that would have benefited consumers and internet companies."
"Net neutrality would not restrict the types of services that
telephone and cable companies could offer; such a policy would make
certain that those companies had to do so in a non-discriminatory
fashion as the law originally intended," said Sohn.
