Yet another Obama legacy item, net neutrality, was dismantled by the Trump administration recently. The 3-2 party-line decision by the FCC elicited howls from liberal quarters, and several blue-state AGs promised legal action to block it.
The long debate over net neutrality has had few echoes outside Washington, where the average internet user has no idea what's at stake. Ask for a definition of net neutrality and you will most likely be greeted with a blank stare.
The revoked "Open Internet Rule" was a fix looking for a problem. Two years after a Democrat majority on the commission voted to implement it in 2015, nothing had really changed in the way internet service providers (ISPs), like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T, did business. Ironically, some of the big players have announced they plan to adhere to the terms of the now-defunct rule.
And why not? The rule forbade ISPs from charging data-intensive websites for "fast lane" speeds needed to send quality video and gaming over their infrastructure, but it didn't stop the ISPs from accomplishing that goal indirectly. Before and after the rule was adopted, big ISPs surcharged customers who exceeded their data limits viewing some content offerings, while assessing customers no data time for viewing similar data from content providers that paid the ISP. This tactic puts non-associated content providers at a distinct business disadvantage, the kind of "throttling" net neutrality was supposed to eliminate.
The cure is more competition, not more rules. More than half the households in the U.S. have at best one high-speed internet option, and most of the rest have just two. Rules that keep ISPs from charging content providers for heavy data streams over their lines simply prompt the ISPs to raise monthly consumer fees, with little fear that a competitor will offer better service at a lower rate.
Technology, not government, is again coming to the rescue. The current highest data technology is 4G, but the 5G revolution is dawning. Verizon spent more than $20 billion setting up a 4G network that covers only the most populated slices of the country, a level of capitalization that few companies could afford. 5G networks don’t rely on massive towers but rather on small high-frequency routers positioned every few blocks. In densely populated areas, home routers may even be incorporated into the network, no FCC licensing or massive infrastructure required.
The danger of classifying ISPs as public utilities, as the Open Internet Rule did, is that the big boys have a tendency to form cozy relationships with big government, and to use those relationships to kill threatening innovation and competition.
Count on the free market to keep the internet free and open, not the Washington bureaucracy.

Martin Fey is a member of the Quiet Corner Tea Party Patriots.