The Prolific Professor Lyons on Broadband Policy

Not to be missed is the succinct case for tiered pricing made by Prof. Daniel Lyons in his March 25 post at The Hill's Congress blog, "Internet pricing: The next policy frontier." In addition to his academic duties at Boston College Law School, Prof. Lyons is a Member of FSF's Board of Academic Advisers.

As Prof. Lyons explains in the post: "Usage-based pricing is not inherently anti-competitive or anti-consumer. Rather, it is an alternative method of spreading costs across a network's customer base." As a result, heavy users pay more. "Tiered plans can also help make broadband more affordable to low-income consumers." Tiered or usage-based pricing practices are common throughout the economy.

On April 3, FSF published Prof. Lyons's Perspectives paper, "The Challenge of VoIP to Legacy Federal and State Regulatory Regimes." He also spoke at FSF's Fifth Annual Conference on panel focused on "The Right Regulatory Approaches for Wireline and Wireless Broadband Providers." The YouTube video for that panel is below.