Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts

of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org

where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast, and find links to

another information related to today's conversation. Our email address is mailadicontalk.org. We'd

love to hear from you. My guest today is Thomas Hazelett, Professor of Law and Economics,

and my colleague here at George Mason University. Welcome to Econ Talk. Thanks Russ. Our topic

today is telecommunications. A subject most of us pay little attention to, except when it

sort of burst through into the news, loudly enough to get us focused on it. One of the issues

that we hear about a lot these days is net neutrality. What is that issue and what's involved?

The question actually is harder than you might think because there are many flavors of proposed

regulation which are involved in the net neutrality matrix. But at a high level, the argument is

made that the internet has been created according to particular blueprints of architectural design.

And this design is to basically separate the edge of the network, which is where applications

are provided to end users, individual consumers, from the core of the network, which is essentially

an interconnected layer of networks. And the argument has been that this design of the internet

has worked particularly well in allowing lots of independent innovators to offer their content

or applications to the marketplace without reinventing the wheel, which is to save building

their own delivery network. And so the argument is extended to say that this structure is

in danger by the emergence of large network providers, if you will, the Comcast, the AT&T's or

Verizon's, which have constructed very considerable infrastructure to bring high-speed data services

to businesses, small businesses, and households. And that they might, if left to their own devices,

try to trespass in the sense of closing off access at the edge of the network so that to

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