Network Neutrality: Fact vs. Fiction

This report on net neutrality discusses the following "facts":

• FACT #1: Network Neutrality protections have existed for the entire history of the Internet.
• FACT #2: Network discrimination through a “tiered Internet” will severely curtail consumer choice, giving consumer control over the Internet to the network owners.
• FACT #3: Network discrimination through a “tiered Internet” will undermine innovation, investment, and competition.
• FACT #4: Network discrimination through a “tiered Internet” will fundamentally alter the consumer’s online experience by creating fast and slow lanes for Internet content.
• FACT #5: No one has a “free ride” on the Internet. Network operators have the revenue streams to support infrastructure development.
• FACT #6: Telephone companies have received billions of dollars in public subsidies over the years to support network build-out.
• FACT #7: There is little competition in the broadband market, certainly not enough to punish anti-competitive behavior.
• FACT #8: Consumers will bear the costs for network infrastructure regardless of whether there is Network Neutrality or not.
• FACT #9: Investing in increased bandwidth is the most efficient way to solve network congestion problems; discrimination creates an incentive to maintain scarcity.
• FACT #10: Network owners have explicitly stated their intent to scrap Network Neutrality guarantees and build business models based on network discrimination.
• FACT #11: The House and Senate telecom bills will not deter discrimination, and even tie the hands of the FCC from ever preventing it.
• FACT #12: The organizations supporting Network Neutrality represent a broad, nonpartisan, coalition that joins right and left, commercial and noncommercial.