In a meeting at the FCC today, a very controversial proposition was offered:

Should the U.S. adopt rules that would require Internet providers to share their broadband lines with rivals, like other countries?

The idea that the US should expropriate networks is being proposed by the Harvard Berkman Center, which should come as a surprise to nobody, considering – warning, dig forthcoming! – the Berkman Center is also currently promoting a new paper that claims we would “all benefit and grow when we forget what we think we know about property rights…”

While the Berkman Center’s broadband review is undeniably important, it is also undeniably flawed and incomplete.  (See also: here and here and here).  The difficulty of collecting comparable data and controlling for a myriad of complexities makes these flaws very understandable – some of them even unavoidable – but it does not justify making enormous, speculative policy changes.  It certainly does not justify what amounts to an expropriation of private networks.  As Larry Lessig wrote in Newsweek last year…

Such regulation need not, in my view, go as far as some Democrats have demanded. It need not put extreme limits on what the Verizons of the world can do with their network—they did, after all, build it in the first place—but no doubt a minimal set of rules is necessary to make sure that the Net continues to be a crucial platform for economic growth.

Unfortunately, the FCC is placing a great deal of weight on this review of broadband research.  As the Phoenix Center’s Dr. George S. Ford wrote, depending on a single, flawed report does not serve Chairman Genachowski’s desire for “enlightened, data-driven decisionmaking”.  “Measure twice, cut once” is good advice.  The Berkman Center wants the FCC to eyeball it and start cutting.

The administration and the FCC want universal broadband deployment, which it estimates will cost between $20 and $350 billion.   Threatening to force access sharing requirements on network owners doesn’t seem like a good way to motivate investment.