The American Consumer Institute
Center for Citizen Research
Innovation and National Broadband Policies: Facts, Fiction and Unanswered Questions
March 2, 2010
Larry F. Darby
Joeseph P. Fuhr

In this paper, Darby and Fuhr make the case for maintaining current Internet policies to continue fostering innovation. The FCC has cited innovation as a key element in recent regulation talks, and Darby and Fuhr present arguments about the topic based on current literature. The two believe that “innovation is thriving at both the core and the edge of the network in the current policy environment, which has fundamentally allowed the Internet to evolve with little government involvement.”

The authors make the following arguments to support their claim:

• Within the current regulatory system, infrastructure companies have produced new technologies, including creative business practices, transmission and switching technologies, services, and distribution devices.
• Cable, wireline and wireless networks have created technologies, services, business models and equipment.
• Innovations at the core have both encouraged and enabled innovation around the edges.
• There is an “undeniable link” between network innovation and broadband infrastructure investment.
• Many technologies and innovations at the edge are possible because of their introduction by Internet providers.
• Common-carrier regulation would decrease incentives for innovation and investment.
• No literature proves that proposed network neutrality regulation would promote innovation.
• Net neutrality proponents incorrectly associate the “incidence of innovation activities and accomplishments.”
• They also assume that rules on core networks would enable edge innovation at a risk of affecting a constantly changing ecosystem.

You can find the paper in full here.