Fear and Loathing as Telecom Policy

[Commentary] The adoption of the "Pulver Order" by the Federal Communications Commission in 2004 recognized the madness of applying 70-year-old Title II telecom regulations to IP communications.

Ten years later friends in telecommunication policy circles spend their days weighing the implications of legal hypotheticals that imagine discrimination by network operators as the primary threat to the communication future.

Net neutrality relies on the fear and loathing of telephone companies as a basis for applying Title II regulations to IP networks. This reversal by civil society and entrepreneur friends who had supported Pulver Order puts the madness back in play. The reversal includes circumstances making the network operators allies in preserving the Pulver Order's deference to technology innovation and Moore's Law.

Applying Title II to IP networks creates a new Federal Computer Commission with authority to weigh in on everything connected to an IP network, in other words -- everything.

[Pulver is investor founder of Vonage]