There’s more to say about that AEI-Joint Center working paper on net neutrality (if you missed our first post on it, scroll down or click here, and download the PDF here). As we pointed out before, flexibility is all-important. Although the article doesn’t identify the worrisome Dorgan-Snowe bill,

Regulation of prices and services has often resulted in costs that exceed benefits, especially in competitive markets. Highly dynamic markets, such as those for high-speed Internet services, pose particular problems because they change so quickly. In such dynamic markets, it is difficult for regulators to determine appropriate prices because technology and consumer demands are so difficult to forecast; and introducing price regulation risks discouraging the healthy process of risk-taking innovation—which is especially important in telecommunications.

The paper also helps put to rest the argument that the broadband market isn’t competitive:

By December 2005, according to the FCC’s latest statistics, 93 percent of all zip codes in the U.S. had two or more broadband providers, and 82 percent had three or more. … Consumers are benefiting from this competition. For example, between 2001 and 2005, the average price of a digital subscriber line dropped by about one-third. In the case of cable, the quality-adjusted price declined significantly, as cable connection speeds increased significantly while prices held steady.

To hear the net-regulation enthusiasts describe the future of the Internet, you’d think the sky was falling. Turns out, that’s just the prices.

Bottom line? We have a lot of challenges in store as the Internet continues to grow, chief among them figuring out how to bring broadband access to everyone. But that’s just another reason why the Internet’s development is too important to be left to the regulators.

(With apologies to Funkmaster Flex.)

There’s a new working paper from AEI-Brookings Joint Center making the rounds. The title? “Economists’ Statement on Network Neutrality Policy.” The authors are 16 academic economists from the United States, United Kingdom and France, including Robert Litan from AEI-Brookings and Thomas W. Hazlett from George Mason.

But don’t let that scare you: It’s concise, written in plain English, and offers policy proposals that aim to both protect the online experience as we know it today and foster an environment under which the U.S. Internet can flourish. Click here to download it free as a PDF. Here are their key recommendations:

Recommendation 1: The antitrust enforcement agencies should be directed to investigate and, if the evidence warrants, file actions to prevent abuses by Internet service providers with market power that distort competition on the Internet.

Recommendation 2: Firms should be allowed to experiment with different pricing schemes for providing Internet access.

Recommendation 3: Congress and federal regulators should promote policies that increase the opportunities for competition and foster Internet innovation. One such policy would be spectrum liberalization.

The first two points should be familiar enough to regular readers, but the third point is an interesting one that we haven’t really covered here. But the point is much the same: freeing up the wireless spectrum so they can be put to the most efficient use is a good, hands-off way to let the Internet grow.

As they say in their summary, “flexibility is likely to be the best way to insure efficient innovation on the information superhighway.”