The Coming War on Network Neutrality

[Commentary] Tom Wheeler, President Obama’s nominee to run the Federal Communications Commission, surely has much he hopes to get done. Perhaps it’s freeing up some more wireless spectrum or bringing cell-phone service to Mars—who knows. But chances are (assuming his confirmation goes smoothly) that he’ll end up spending time on different challenges, and a chief candidate is a resurgence of the network neutrality wars.

The outgoing chairman, Julius Genachowski, made many very good and important decisions, but he also made a rather terrible one that may darken Wheeler’s term. Chairman Genachowski spent years and much political capital negotiating network neutrality rules that everyone could live with, only to enact them in a way that is highly vulnerable to a court challenge. That challenge (brought, cynically, by Verizon after it negotiated the rules it wanted) may soon invalidate years of work and create industry chaos. Wheeler and the other members of the Federal Communications Commission will be very tempted to try and avoid and ignore network neutrality during President Obama’s second term. If, magically, the rules aren’t struck down, they will have that luxury. But if the rules are struck down, avoiding the problem may lead to a replication of the horrors of the cable-television market. There’s trouble brewing; facing it is both the Commission’s responsibility and its destiny.