Net Neutrality Has Become An Industrial Policy

[Commentary] The net neutrality movement has lost its way. Net neutrality used to be a principle to protect Internet users -- now it’s devolving into political messaging to hide an industrial policy that could harm users.

In opposing a two-sided Internet market, the movement is strongly protecting Silicon Valley’s economic interests by strongly opposing any payment for quality-of-service or specialized-network services for Silicon Valley’s bandwidth-dominating services like video streaming. Ironically, the new net neutrality slogan of “no fast lanes” runs counter to the net neutrality movement’s past focus that broadband has not been fast enough and that the U.S. was falling behind the rest of the world in broadband speeds. Does the net neutrality movement now want a faster Internet or not?

[Cleland is President of Precursor LLC, a research consultancy for Fortune 500 companies]