I look at broadband companies as having a double mandate. First, they have to provide a service to their broadband customers, within the constraint of a competitive market. Second, they have to maintain the very communications and information structure the Federal Communications Commission is required to ensure pursuant to the Communications Act.

The government is not going to build it, nor should we expect it to. The FCC has created a mechanism that reimburses broadband companies for the high costs of deploying to and serving rural and other high-cost consumers. Although the FCC is responsible for ensuring universal access by every American household to a nationwide communications network, it is still left up to the market to distribute those services via the price mechanism.

Recent comments in FCC Docket No. 12-69 would try to persuade the FCC that the agency should somehow influence how broadband providers price their broadband access services. Such requested influence would be a violation of the principles of free markets and capitalism that this nation has adopted for centuries.

In addition, reinvestment in the networks the FCC expects to be deployed and maintained requires a sufficient revenue stream to do so. Commenters have always expressed issues with the size of AT&T and Verizon, yet offer no reasonable or feasible alternatives to how a large number of current customers are to be served. Conducting a séance to conjure the ghost of Harold Green seems to be the ultimate goal of commenters who question the market size of the industry’s two largest players.

Until commenters can introduce an economic model that surpasses our current free market apparatus for determining price and output for broadband services, the FCC can best serve the consuming public by politely discounting their arguments.

Today the House Committee on Small Business heard from the heads of the Federal Communications Commission, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, and the Rural Utility Service. Each agency described how it was contributing to the deployment of broadband, ensuring competition amongst broadband providers, and financing the construction of facilities.

The testimony of the agency heads did not provide any new information that would move markets, raise any additional concerns about regulatory uncertainty, or otherwise would cause investors any heart burn.

Notable mention should be given to FCC chairman Julius Genachowski for telling committee members that the FCC intended to continue a light touch approach to regulating the Internet and RUS head Jonathan Adelstein taking the position that industry consolidation was not necessarily good for broadband deployment in rural areas.

My take away from this afternoon’s hearing is the reminder that the Congress is responsible for regulating commerce. Commerce refers to trade on a large scale, usually across states or countries. Large scale trade needs the appropriate infrastructure to move large volumes of goods and services. E-commerce has the same needs from the infrastructure we call broadband.

What Congress needs to do is continue with its light touch approach to regulating commerce that goes across the broadband infrastructure. Speed limits and other network management requirements don’t need to be placed on it. Additional requirements will only dampen economic growth. The innovation and job creation each agency head mentioned today has been emerging from a light touch regulatory scheme. There is no need to change that.

Yesterday Wired.com reported that Free Press and other advocacy groups have raised concerns that AT&T is charging consumers to access an application that allows video conversations between users of Apple devices. The application is called Face Time and was developed by Apple, Inc. The application currently works over WiFi networks. Free Press believes that the requirement that consumers pay AT&T a fee for accessing Face Time almost certainly violates the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rules.

So does a pricing model requiring that consumers of AT&T wireless services pay a fee in order to access a communications application violate the net neutrality rules? I do not believe the pricing model creates a violation.

Under the FCC’s net neutrality rules, mobile broadband providers may not block lawful websites or block applications that compete with their voice or video telephony services. Network management practices are reasonable if they are appropriate and tailored to achieving a legitimate management purpose.

The order does not address any prohibitions on the type of pricing models a carrier may use for its wireless services, including access to mobile applications. While the order does discuss the impact of unreasonable charges assessed to edge providers, it makes no explicit or implicit prohibition on the pricing model being implemented by AT&T.

According to the Wired.com article, Verizon does not assess a fee for access to Face Time. The obvious free market solution for consumers who do not wish to pay to access Face Time would be to switch to another carrier should their decision model conclude that such a switch is worth the cost.

Should the assertions by Free Press escalate to a formal complaint, I believe that the FCC will find that differences in each company’s network will justify differences in pricing models. Also, the FCC may find that extending rules to cover prices charged to wireless customers in an industry that the FCC has not determined to be non-competitive will be an unreasonable reach.