One of the most backwards ideas of recent has been net neutrality, which is the concept that it’s permissible to have Internet Service Provider monopolies as long as they are heavily regulated in their operations to sure there is no discrimination in the content they provide. 🌍Net neutrality is a principle that dates back to common carrier principles of A&TT, aka Ma Bell, back when there was only one telephone company who provided all the telephone service in the nation. If you didn’t like the service or the price of AT&T, then too bad. The government had prior to the 1980s decided what a fair service and a reasonable (but expensive!) price looked like for telephone service. The heavy regulation of AT&T didn’t work well, as anybody who made a a call even outside of their local calling zone can attest to prior to the mid-1990s.☎ Phones were reliable thanks to government regulation in the 1960s and 1970s, but they cost an arm and leg to call long distance. Net neutrality is an idea that comes out of an era when oil prices were regulated, leading to lines at gas stations, and when the government set the fares for airplanes that were so expensive, only the rich could ride them.

Regulated monopolies always provide bad service and high prices.🤑 While government regulation of monopolies can offset some of their most negative aspects, they are still plagued by the nature of a monopoly to do the absolute minimum service at the absolutely highest price that government regulators can tolerate. If you don’t like the price or service offered by the monopoly, you have one choice: live without.🚫 Indeed, that’s what I am doing with Internet service. Rather pay the local “regulated” monopoly an extraordinarily high price with lousy service and scammy pricing, I choose to live without Internet at home, walking down to the local public library or park a few times a week to get on the Internet. Maybe at some point, government regulators will get fed up with the price and their scammy tactics, and force price capping and fair terms on the price of Internet Service, but don’t hold your breath. 🕴Even if they were to do this, expect either the government to set the price too low, discouraging investment in Internet infrastructure or more likely set the price too high, making people pay more money then they need for Internet, while padding the profits of multinational corporations that sell Internet access.😡

The solution is not heavy regulation, but break up the Internet monopolies.💔 Every American should have the right to choose the provider they want that best serves their needs at the lowest price. If people want a provider that offers accelerated service to certain websites, then that’s great. Maybe the Facebook and Amazon could make special deals with the provider to make their websites even more dynamic or quicker loading.🖥 That violates net neutrality, but it could lead to very cheap or even free Internet, in exchange for watching more advertising or a preference for sites that have a financial interest in you going there like Amazon. Or for mobile Internet, maybe their websites wouldn’t count against your broadband limit. Such a service might be extraordinarily cheap, because it’s not just you the consumer that pays the whole cost of the service. But what if you don’t want that kind of service, preferring equal speed for all services? Then you should have the ability to choose a different provider. Maybe one that offers a flat price for all Internet services at the same price. Rather then paying scammy year-long contracts, maybe one could buy Internet month-to-month with no installation fees. Or maybe get a very fast connection for a little more money.⚡

Regulators have long seen the benefit to having more competition in providing services. Yet, we got stuck with stodgy regulated monopolies for the telephones for decades because the problem of last mile. It’s expensive and impractical to run multiple fiber optic cables to each house in the neighborhood. ☎That justified the awful solution of utility and telephone monopolies that served communities poorly with expensive service and polluting, inefficient power plants. So what’s the solution? Prohibit cable companies and telecommunications companies that own the last mile fiber optic and cable lines from offering Internet Service. 🔌While everybody might have their Internet connection ultimately wired by Time Warner or Verizon in a single neighborhood, people would have the choice of any Internet Service Provider they wanted, which would secure the necessary bandwidth from Time Warner and Verizon.

Individuals consumers don’t have much negotiation power against Time Warner and Verzion. A multi-national corporation isn’t going to care if one consumer refuses Internet Service. But multi-national corporation which has millions of consumers can demand a lower price from Time Warner and Verizon for the last mile service.🔌 With Time Warner and Verizon out of the business of providing consumer Internet Service, they can shed millions of unhappy customers and know they only have to be responsive to their new customers – the Internet Service Providers. Regulators won’t have to aggressively regulate Time Warner or Verizon anymore, because the Internet Service Providers can negotiate terms that ensure a reliable, fast last mile connection. Time Warner and Verizon can be happy knowing that they are free of government regulation and unhappy individual consumers, while the consumer wins by having access to a wide variety of affordable services from hundreds, if not thousands of Internet Service Providers.⁉ Consumers who hate their service could easily change to another provider by calling them up on the phone. No physical wiring changes are needed. Competition would greatly lower price and increase competition.

This is how the Internet used to be back in the 1990s, before cable modems and high-speed Internet became common.📶 Everybody used to use dial up service, which you could choose from one of many. You might choose AOL, CompuServ or one of the many low-cost Internet providers. Dial-up service worked over the conventional phone lines, where the local phone company provided the last mile service.📳 The Internet provider connected you to the Internet with specialized, centralized phone equipment that had at the switching units of the phone company. With AOL you got preferred content in the AOL universe, which actually downloaded faster then the Internet, due to aggressive caching and compression of the data compared to other websites. It might not have been net neutrality, but it provided a popular service for many years.📞 But it didn’t matter, because if you hated AOL, there was dozens of competitors in the dial-up Internet service business.

Net neutrality maintains a bad system that doesn’t work for average consumers.📛 It should be repealed, and new laws and regulations should be created to prohibit Time Warner and Verizon, and all other last mile providers from providing Internet Service. Time Warner and Verizon should look forward to not have to deal with individual consumers and government regulators going forward, but instead working out fair and reasonable deals with various national Internet Service Providers to provide the last mile.🚫 Consumers get more choice, higher speeds of Internet, and a much better bargain by going with independent, nationally-based Internet Service Providers. Repealing net neutrality and turning over the last mile to competition is a win for all.🖥