AT&T (And Friends) Still Hard At Work Making Up Net Neutrality Job Loss Figures

from the scary-looking-pie-charts dept

As the FCC gets closer to crafting network neutrality rules (assuming they even have the authority to do so), AT&T lobbyists have worked overtime to push the idea that creating such rules would automatically result in job losses. To help nudge this scary meme into the press, they hired their old friend Bret Swanson, formerly employed at the Discovery Institute -- a think tank that created both the "Exaflood" (debunked here countless times) and "Intelligent Design". Back in February Swanson, like most AT&T hired policy wonks, used completely bogus "science" to insist that network neutrality rules would result in 1.5 million job losses. He came to that number simply by adding up all of the people employed by companies that submitted comments to the FCC opposing network neutrality (seriously).

Now AT&T is back at work again, this time pushing the job loss claims through an AT&T-backed group called Mobile Future. Mobile Future has sponsored a new study (pdf) claiming that network neutrality laws will result in 340,000 lost jobs over the next 10 years -- and 1.5 million lost jobs across all sectors by 2020. Using the impact the 1996 Telecom Act and local loop unbundling requirements had on the broadband sector as a broad foundation, the study tries to somehow project that FCC neutrality rules would slow broadband revenues by one-sixth. But as Bob Cringley notes, linking the complicated fight over line sharing (however you felt about it) to network neutrality isn't a coherent foundation:

"...it's hard to see how government regulation was the problem when the Bells largely refused to comply with it. You'd think being forced to share aging copper lines with startups would have encouraged the Bells to invest in better, higher-speed networks, not the opposite. Extrapolating from that regulatory situation to Net neutrality is like taking laws regulating manure production by draft horses to make projections about the future of the space shuttle."

Just as with bogus piracy statistics, there's simply too many moving parts to make these kinds of projections one way or the other (and the study doesn't try too hard to support the idea that neutrality could bolster content industry employment). You'd be hard pressed to get a room full of people to agree on what network neutrality even is after years of muddled debate -- much less find a way to tie concrete job loss figures to the nebulous concept. Meanwhile, the AT&T-funded study unsurprisingly skips over the fact that companies like AT&T and Verizon are already laying off a significant number of employees as they lose landline customers (or in Verizon's case, intentionally hang up on rural markets and slow FiOS deployment).

There's also the small fact that while the FCC has issued proposals for new network neutrality rules, they haven't crafted any concrete rules yet or defined key terms -- making job loss predictions premature at best and completely absurd at worst. Even if the FCC were to craft rules defining "fair" network management practices, it seems likely that the final rules (once they run the lobbyist gauntlet) would be just as timid as the agency's national broadband plan, which avoided tackling competition or truly rattling the status quo for fear of upsetting powerful carriers. For all of the annoying and ridiculous hysteria surrounding network neutrality, the most the rules seem likely to cause is a few sleepless nights for carrier lobbyists -- who have to stay up late designing scary-looking pie charts.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: net neutrality, studies
Companies: at&t