The 2015 Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Open Internet Order concluded that hard net neutrality rules are necessary to “protect free expression and innovation on the Internet and promote investment in the nation’s broadband networks.”3 The order’s strongly worded emphasis on protecting innovation and promoting investment implied that the agency had performed a robust analysis, in particular an empirically based assessment of the regulation’s likely impact. But the 400-page order contains no such analysis.

In the vast literature that has developed on net neutrality, almost no one has tested it empirically by comparing the efforts of different national policies and, more importantly, whether the policies delivered the promised results. The net neutrality concept developed by Tim Wu,4 Mark Lemley and Lawrence Lessig,5 and Barbara van Schewick6 suggests there is an inherent problem with private ownership of broadband networks and that only government provision of broadband, or at least heavy regulation of broadband networks, can ensure a “neutral platform” for third-party innovation.7 As such, Open Internet policy implements a set of price and traffic controls on broadband internet access service (BIAS) providers to give “edge providers,” or third-party application developers, an advantage...

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