SMALL BUSINESS TO THE RESCUE?

As with global warming policy, there is some hope among liberal activists that businesses can lead where government won’t or can’t. A unique example is Credo Mobile, a combination wireless company and liberal activist organization that’s been advocating on net neutrality and a bunch of other issues. “We are committed to doing everything we can to fight for both Title II net neutrality as well as broadband privacy protections,” wrote its deputy political director Josh Nelson in an email.

Christopher Mitchell is optimistic about economic forces working in net neutrality’s favor among smaller providers. One is competition. The fact that an ISP is competing in a market means it has to be sensitive to what customers want.

The other factor is that small ISPs don’t have the market power to push people around. “If you are a small ISP and you want to call Netflix to charge them more for fast lanes, good luck! No one is going to return that call,” says Mitchell. “But if you are Comcast, Netflix has to pay attention.”

But Dane Jasper, CEO of Sonic, a smaller ISP that’s a darling of net neutrality activists, is less sanguine. “There are some, generally smaller ISPs who support net neutrality, and some who do not,” writes Jasper in an email, noting for instance wireless ISPs who might be siding with Pai in order to save money. “In my experience, this is likely to be because they have already been throttling video rather than upgrading their networks,” he says. (Major wireless carriers reduce the resolution of streaming HD video on the fly to avoid taxing their capacity.) Read More