FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, May 18, 2017, Contact: Scott Cleland 703-217-2407
What’s Wrong with This Picture? Pressure Groups and their Netopolies-Funders: Google, Facebook and Amazon, Hypocritically Demand Utility Regulation of Competitive Broadband ISPs to Prevent Commercial Discrimination or Blocking When the Netopolies are the Actual De Facto Utilities that Discriminate and Block as a Key Part their Business Models
WASHINGTON D.C. – The following may be attributed to Scott Cleland, Chairman of NetCompetition:
“Title II broadband regulation proponents sacrifice their credibility when they claim competitive companies are monopolies that require the strongest possible utility regulation, while simultaneously claiming Internet monopolies like Google, Facebook and Amazon, are competitive companies that should have no regulation at all.”
“Proponents of Title II utility regulation of broadband ISPs claim to care about preventing anticompetitive discrimination on the Internet, by targeting the competitive broadband ISP industry, where no company has or can have more than a third share of a market. However, they turn a hypocritical blind eye to the fact that their Title allies actually are de facto Internet utilities: Google with 90% share of search/search-advertising; Facebook with 90% share of in social/social-advertising; and Amazon with over half share of all U.S. online commerce and with two-thirds of U.S. households using Amazon Prime for delivery. They also turn a blind eye to how their dominant edge platform allies discriminate and block activity on their platform networks against the content/good/services providers at the edge of their dominant Internet platforms.They never explain how it’s a problem for a network to not be neutral, but it is not a problem when dominant Internet platform’s networks are not neutral.”
NETCompetition.org is a pro-competition e-forum representing broadband interests.
Scott Cleland served as Deputy U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy in the George H. W. Bush Administration.
