Net Neutrality vs. Net Reality

By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., WSJ. Excerpts:

"For starters, notice all the developments in the marketplace that neut activists feel obliged to be outraged about, which they imagined the government could stop. Netflix continues to be dunned for interconnection fees by big cable operators. This is a terrible offense against net neutrality, we’re told, except that it undoubtedly helped to incentivize Netflix’s recent project to reduce the burden of its video on the Internet by 20% without hurting video quality.

Ditto the zero-rating plans put forward by wireless operators like T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T, allowing some data to pass through to users without being subject to data caps. Net neuts are enraged even as these plans help to make video affordable on wireless.

We come to the most bizarre case of net neuties making lemons out of lemonade. A Pew survey finds a small but absolute drop in the number of American households subscribing to fixed broadband. Now, no WSJ reader would be so incautious as to conclude the value of the Internet must therefore be falling for many Americans—it costs too much, who needs it!

Yet this is exactly the interpretation the neut brigade are peddling, even while Pew quietly acknowledges the truth: Fixed broadband subscriptions slipped slightly because fast wireless is increasingly seen by many customers as an adequate substitute.

Let’s see. Mobile devices overtook PCs to account for 55% of Internet traffic in 2014. They accounted for a majority of Google searches by early 2015. Half of Americans use LTE wireless networks, with an average speed of 11 megabits. Is it really a tragedy that some of these Americans now find it unnecessary to pay two broadband bills?"