Was The FCC Comcast Investigation A Farce?

[Commentary] When did Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin turn into a consumer advocate? Bode note's Martin's political ambitions and wonders if he's trying to hold onto his past the time his political rabbi -- George Bush -- leaves office. "But I can't stop wondering if Martin's new found obsession with ISP "transparency" doesn't have a larger motive than just politics," Bode writes. While consumer advocates are cheering the FCC decision as a network neutrality victory, and pro-free-market types are lamenting Martin as the worst sort of socialist evil-doer, Comcast really won't see more than a wrist slap. Note the only real change is that Comcast may impose a 250GB monthly cap, and start charging users $15 for each 10 GB over the cap they travel. I'll repeat: the only real result of the investigation is bad press for Comcast and an industry push toward caps and metered usage. Who benefits? The best case scenario is that Martin is just pretending to champion network neutrality in order to further his political future. The worst case scenario is that Martin and AT&T are using the throttling investigation to begin warming consumers to an immensely unpopular pricing model. If the latter, expect the hard sell for metered pricing to drop this fall, with a heavy push coming from AT&T and their various policy mouthpieces.