Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2018
Abstract
The judicial decision invalidating the Federal Communications Commission's first Open Internet Order has led advocates to embrace common carriage as the legal basis for network neutrality. In so doing, network neutrality proponents have overlooked the academic literature on common carriage as well as lessons from its implementation history. This Essay distills these learnings into five factors that play a key role in promoting common carriage's success: (1) commodity products, (2) simple interfaces, (3) stability and uniformity in the transmission technology, (4) full deployment of the transmission network, and (5) stable demand and market shares. Applying this framework to the Internet suggests that common carriage is not particularly well suited as a basis for regulating broadband Internet access.
Keywords
Internet law and regulation, government regulation, communications law, administrative law, Federal Communications Commission, FCC, Open Internet Order, network neutrality, definition and limits of common carriage, broadband, rate regulation, nondiscrimination
Publication Title
Yale Journal on Regulation+H2053
Repository Citation
Yoo, Christopher S., "Common Carriage’s Domain" (2018). All Faculty Scholarship. 2016.
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/2016
Included in
Administrative Law Commons, Communications Law Commons, Computer Law Commons, Digital Communications and Networking Commons, Internet Law Commons, Law and Economics Commons, Policy History, Theory, and Methods Commons, Public Economics Commons, Science and Technology Law Commons, Science and Technology Policy Commons, Science and Technology Studies Commons
Publication Citation
34 Yale J. on Reg. 991 (2018).