Classifying Internet as utility a perilous concept

On the heels of more than 1.1 million Americans recently submitting comments to the Federal Communications Commission on Internet openness, the FCC has announced that it will hold a series of “open Internet roundtable discussions” with the aim of clarifying to what extent communications law should be reinterpreted. Central to that proceeding is “net neutrality,” a catchall term for severe regulation of broadband providers and Internet companies. This notion that the FCC should reinterpret the law and, for the first time ever, “reclassify” broadband as a public utility is perilous.

Providing the Internet is nothing like supplying water or electricity, of course. Broadband carries speech, information, and entertainment, and there should be an impermeable wall of separation between regulators and the Internet.