Consumer survey exposes wireless open access as tech industrial policy

Network World has a great piece: "Open Access not as important to wireless consumers as QoS, pricing, survey finds" which exposes the Google-led tech industry's push for open access as a not-so-subtle tech-industrial policy.

• The survey by Compete, Inc. found:
  • Only 9% of wireless users did not believe they had enough options for handsets;
  • Only 11% of wireless users believe that their carrier offered them too little content and services to meet their needs;
  • In stark contrast, 93% of wireless users believe getting a phone at a reasonable price was either important or very important.

This survey is important evidence exposing the tech industry's attempt to pass net neutrality/open access legislation/regulation as an thinly-guised tech industrial policy.

• This tech industrial policy is asking the government to intervene and mandate engineering design and pass price-related regulations that would de facto choose tech companies as market winners and communications companies as market losers.

The tech industry has done a good job of cloaking their openness campaign as what consumers want most -- because that serves their Washington industrial policy agenda.

• Too bad the reality is that consumers are not clamoring for more openness, they are clamoring for the priorities that the wireless industry is focused on fulfilling: price and quality of service -- i.e. value to the customer.

Google and many of its tech brethren like to spin:

• that the tech industry is competitive and that the communications industry is not; and
• that only the tech industry innovates and benefits consumers and that the communications industry does not. 

That may be the perception that the tech industry has and wants to create -- the problem is that it is not backed up by the facts.