Washington, DC, July 16, 2007 — Hands Off The Internet, the nationwide coalition supporting growth of the Internet for the benefit of consumers, today made a filing with the FCC showing how proponents of so-called Net Neutrality regulation – including especially Internet giant Google — have failed to provide any concrete reasons why such regulation is needed. The filing came in response to FCC filings by Google and others in the late Spring in which they called for formal regulation of the Internet by the FCC.

The Hands Off submission – which you can read here (pdf) - explains that, despite the overheated claims by Google that new regulations are needed, there is no current or likely market condition that they can point to justifying new regulations by the Commission. Specifically, as Hands Off points out, Google and its allies cannot show any content discrimination or service degradation to warrant intervention by the government. The filing also highlights how regulation of the sort sought by Google has the potential to thwart Internet growth and make consumer access unfairly expensive.

Hands Off co-chairs Mike McCurry and Christopher Wolf, a partner at the law firm of Proskauer Rose LLP (author of the FCC filings for the coalition), called the pro-net neutrality demands “all style and no substance”.

In the opening summary of the FCC submission, Hands Off explains that:

[i]n contrast to the reasoned submissions of those against net neutrality regulation, proponents of net neutrality regulation have failed to identify a single consumer harm the Commission needs to address through the adoption of a new regulatory regime. Instead, these proponents rely, as they have now for several years, on conjecture, speculation and hypocritical assertions to suggest that the marketplace, notwithstanding the extraordinary success and continued growth of the Internet, must now be regulated in order to ensure consumers will be protected from non-existent harms.

The Hands Off filing also cites extensively to a Federal Trade Commission staff report issued after the initial filings at the FCC by Google and others, in which the FTC finds net neutrality to be a “non-issue” given that competition in the broadband market is increasing, and that the hypothetical concerns raised by neutrality supporters can be addressed by existing laws.

Hands Off has emphasized the importance of providing consumers, at a reasonable cost, with robust networks that can handle the massive increase in data traffic that has occurred due in large part to video applications. The coalition’s FCC filings show how net neutrality will get in the way of the next generation Internet, and will shift the cost burden unfairly to consumers. “Google’s call for federal regulation of the Internet with no facts to back up its demand, seems designed only to benefit Google and not consumers”, said Hands Off co-chairs McCurry and Wolf.

The Hands Off the Internet coalition is a Washington, DC-based coalition of companies and nonprofit organizations that believes the Internet has flourished because government has not tried to regulate it. Members include Alcatel-Lucent, AT&T, 3M, the National Association of Manufacturers, FiberControl, and Cinergy Communications. Nonprofit members include Citizens Against Government Waste, the American Conservative Union and the National Black Chamber of Commerce.