May 2, 2008\
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**DOES NET NEUTRALITY REQUIRE GOVERNMENT REGULATION?\
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ACCORDING TO THE *WALL STREET JOURNAL*,\
"MARKETS WORK"**

Dear Colleague,\
 \
I call your attention to this recent *Wall Street Journal* editorial on
**net neutrality**.  Like many of you, I believe keeping the Internet
unfettered by government regulation is the only way to bring faster
speeds and more dynamic applications. Competition and a free marketplace
serve as the best protection for consumers. So far, the government has
basically stayed out of the way, and the widespread availability of
high-speed Internet services is a huge success story. The question then
becomes, what is the role of government in ensuring that consumers are
allowed unfettered access to any lawful Internet content and
applications?  \
 \
We should be careful about imposing Internet regulations. So-called
**network neutrality** is yet another example of ready, fire, then aim.
There is no surer way to kill broadband investment and innovation.
Everyone has an interest in managing networks to make sure consumers
receive the best possible experience. In fact, Comcast's recent
agreements with BitTorrent and Pando show that marketplace negotiation
works.  At this point, there does not appear to be any need for
intervention, either in Congress or at the FCC.\
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If you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact
me or have your staff contact Matt Mandel at 225-5744.  With kind
regards, I am\
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Sincerely,\
 /s  \
Cliff Stearns\
Ranking Member\
Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet\
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**THE WALL STREET JOURNAL\
REVIEW & OUTLOOK\
An Alternative to \'Net Neutrality\'\
April 12, 2008\
**\
Google, MoveOn.org and other comrades in regulation have been calling
for more government control of Internet service for several years now.
The good news is they\'ve just suffered a setback. An agreement worked
out recently between cable giant Comcast and BitTorrent, the creator of
a popular file-sharing program, offers a private-sector alternative to
\"net neutrality\" industrial policy.\
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Comcast gained villain status last year when the company tried to ease
congestion on its network by slowing the transmission of high-bandwidth
files that use the BitTorrent protocol. BitTorrent users trade large
files that consume huge amounts of capacity and slow down Internet
service for everybody else. Around 5% of the people on Comcast\'s
network use 70% of the capacity.\
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BitTorrent was none-too-pleased, and Comcast\'s political detractors
pounced, arguing that it was proof of a network owner discriminating
among different types of content. Representative Ed Markey of
Massachusetts, who chairs a House subcommittee on telecommunications and
the Internet, chided Comcast executives for trying to turning
\"BitTorrent into BitTrickle\" and called for a \"national broadband
policy.\" Mr. Markey is a Google fave.\
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Kevin Martin, who heads the Federal Communications Commission, accused
Comcast of not being \"open and transparent\" about its network
management practices. Mr. Martin apparently isn\'t finished piling on.
He\'s holding yet another hearing to discuss \"broadband network
management practices\" next week at Stanford University.\
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Comcast was engaging in a kind of content discrimination. But federal
regulations and its \"terms of service\" agreement give Comcast the
authority to use reasonable network management techniques. There\'s also
no evidence Comcast acted to favor a Comcast service, or to shut down a
political view, or for any other nefarious reason that net-neutrality
advocates cite when demanding more government regulation. The company\'s
justifiable goal was making sure that the vast majority of its users
weren\'t receiving poor Internet service on account of a few bandwidth
hogs.\
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The good news is that while politicians and MoveOn were busy exploiting
the episode to push a pro-regulatory agenda, Comcast and BitTorrent were
fleshing out a new network management plan. It will allow file-sharers
to use Comcast\'s network without slowing service for everyone else. And
it shows that the private sector is perfectly capable of handling these
issues on its own.\
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Government\'s role here, properly understood, is not to tell Comcast how
to manage its network. Rather, it is to make sure consumers have
alternatives to Comcast if they are unhappy with their Internet service.
Today, almost everyone in the country has the choice of receiving
Internet service from a cable provider or from a phone company. And the
percentage of people who don\'t have that choice is shrinking rapidly.\
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BitTorrent doesn\'t want resistance from the Internet service providers
that its users depend on, and Comcast doesn\'t want to lose customers to
telcos because of bad service, so both companies had every incentive to
work out their differences. And whaddaya know? They did. Maybe someone
should tell the FCC\'s Mr. Martin that markets work.