Innovation Spillovers and the 'Dirt Road' Fallacy: The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Banning Optional Transactions for Enhanced Delivery Over the Internet

Journal of Competition Law & Economics, Vol. 6, 2010

74 Pages Posted: 22 Apr 2010 Last revised: 21 Apr 2013

See all articles by J. Gregory Sidak

J. Gregory Sidak

Criterion Economics, Inc.

David Teece

Institute for Business Innovation

Date Written: April 26, 2010

Abstract

In October 2009, the Federal Communications Commission proposed “net neutrality” regulations, including a new rule that would have the effect of banning optional business-to-business transactions between broadband Internet service providers (ISPs) and content providers for enhanced delivery of packets over the Internet. The proposed “nondiscrimination” rule would have the ironic effect of actively discriminating against any kind of content or application that is differentiated by its need for greater assurance of higher quality transmission across the Internet (known as quality of service, or QoS) than undifferentiated best-effort delivery can offer. This result not only would reduce static efficiency by encouraging higher consumer prices, but also would reduce dynamic efficiency by retarding innovation. The proposed rule manifests an inverse relationship between means and ends, for it would actively thwart the Commission’s stated purpose of promoting innovation both in and at the edges of the network. These economic considerations set the bar very high for those who claim that the new regulation is needed to prevent theoretical harms that have not materialized in more than a decade of real-world experience. By now, the economic arguments in favor of network neutrality regulation have coalesced around three principal theories. The first is the theory that, if permitted to charge suppliers of content or applications for optional higher quality delivery, network operators will ignore positive spillover effects and set charges at higher than socially optimal levels. The second is the theory that vertically integrated network operators will foreclose independent providers of Internet content and applications. A third and less clearly articulated theory is that the broadband ISP will degrade the quality of best-effort delivery of Internet packets - reducing the quality of best-effort delivery to that of a “dirt road” - as a means of coercing suppliers of content or applications into purchasing superior QoS. We show that none of these three theories of harm is plausible. Certainly, none justifies the proposed across-the-board ban on optional business-to-business QoS transactions between ISPs and content providers - transactions that could prove particularly valuable to smaller content providers looking to differentiate their offerings from and compete with larger content rivals that have the scale and resources to meet their QoS needs with third-party or self-deployed content delivery networks.

Keywords: Network Neutrality, Broadband, Innovation, Spillover, Quality of Service (QoS), Foreclosure, Discrimination, Traffic Management, Prioritization

Suggested Citation

Sidak, J. Gregory and Teece, David J., Innovation Spillovers and the 'Dirt Road' Fallacy: The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Banning Optional Transactions for Enhanced Delivery Over the Internet (April 26, 2010). Journal of Competition Law & Economics, Vol. 6, 2010, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1593761

J. Gregory Sidak (Contact Author)

Criterion Economics, Inc. ( email )

1750 Tysons Boulevard
Suite 1500
McLean, VA 22102
United States
(202) 518-5121 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://www.criterioneconomics.com

David J. Teece

Institute for Business Innovation ( email )

F402 Haas School of Business, #1930
Berkeley, CA 94720-1930
United States
(510) 642-4041 (Phone)

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