Net Neutrality = Socialism?

The four leading candidates in North Carolina’s Republican U.S. Senate primary, including one heavily backed by the state’s largest telecom companies, all said Monday they oppose Net Neutrality and would not allow the federal government to intervene in the business interests of cable and phone companies.

Dr. Greg Brannon, Heather Grant, Rev. Mark Harris, and current state House Speaker Thom Tillis all agreed during an hour-long televised debate that the government had no business telling companies like Time Warner Cable and AT&T how to manage Internet traffic.

Thom Tillis, who became speaker of the house in 2011, is heavily backed with financial contributions from AT&T, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon. While speaker, Tillis supported the Time Warner Cable-backed bill to ban community-owned broadband networks in the state and helped shepherd the legislation through the General Assembly.

Tillis told viewers that North Carolina customers already have a choice of Internet Service Providers so there is no reason for the government to interfere.

“The last thing we need is the government to tell cable providers and Internet providers how fast or slow the content needs to be,” Tillis said.

Tillis was honored in 2011 as ALEC’s “Legislator of the Year” and received an undisclosed cash reward.

Last year, Tillis was accused of having a secret business relationship with Time Warner Cable by Rep. Robert Brawley (R-Iredell), who resigned his chairmanship of the Finance Committee over the matter.

Brawley’s district is served in part by MI-Connection, a community-owned cable company that was prevented from expanding by a state law restricting municipal broadband.

“You slamming my office door shut, standing in front of me and stating that you have a business relationship with Time Warner,” Brawley wrote in his resignation letter. “MI-Connection is being operated just as any other free enterprise system and should be allowed to do so without the restrictions placed on them by the proponents of Time Warner.”

Dr. Brannon said without the Constitution giving direct authority for the federal government to regulate broadband, it cannot legally get involved. There was no broadband service to regulate when the Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787.

“The worst thing in the world we could do is for the federal government to put in barriers to make things fair,” Brannon said. Any attempt to impose fairness on Internet traffic would be a clear-cut case of socialism, Brannon added.

Grant and Harris both agreed with the others.

The four candidates are vying for the Senate seat held by Democrat Kay Hagan. She holds a different view.

“I support Net Neutrality because it speaks to the values central to our American Democracy – free speech and equal opportunity,” Hagan said in 2008. “With an open Internet, we can ensure communities throughout the state of North Carolina and the nation receive equal access to the Internet as well as the information contained there, to help ensure our country can compete on a global level.”

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/UNC-TV NC GOP Senate Debate 2014 – Net Neutrality – Free Market or Socialism 4-30-14.flv[/flv]

Watch occasionally incoherent remarks from four Republican candidates debating the Internet and Net Neutrality as part of the North Carolina Senate primary. (4:31)

China’s top economic planning agency is assessing a monopoly case involving two large telecom companies and will make a ruling soon as the Beijing government declares uncompetitive broadband against the interests of the people.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) began to investigate the duopoly of China Telecom and China Unicom in the broadband business two years ago. The two companies, fearing reprisals, promised to end the questionable practices that brought scores of complaints from Chinese citizens over network incompatibilities, rising prices, and slow service.

The two companies together maintain a 90 percent market share of Chinese broadband, and both could face fines up to 10 percent of their annual Internet revenues if the NDRC finds they are acting as an abusive duopoly.

The Chinese government passed strict anti-monopoly laws in 2008 and has enforced them. Beijing has been particularly concerned about price discrimination against other Internet Service Providers and relentless rate hikes, even as costs to offer the service have dropped dramatically.

The NDRC said on Wednesday that the two companies submitted evidence that suggested both had significantly raised network integration, extended the direct-link bandwidth of their backbone networks, raised broadband speeds and lowered prices.

Although the Chinese government’s free market policies have brought investment and economic change to China, the government has grown increasingly concerned about leaving vital sectors of the economy unregulated. In several instances, the result has been bad for consumers and generally reduced innovation, as handfuls of conglomerates found it easier to enforce market power, reduce investment, and raise prices. The Chinese consider the country’s online networks critical to its participation in the global digital economy, with the NDRC acting as a check against uneven playing fields and abusive business practices.