Internet service providers’ investments in broadband enable Netflix NFLX -1.87 % to deliver video seamlessly over the Internet. Apple takes these investments for granted when it designs new mobile devices. But in February the Federal Communications Commission, after allowing network engineers and developers to operate freely for 20 years, subjected them to bureaucratic oversight in the name of “net neutrality.” Apple was silent on the move, and Netflix cheered it on.

The FCC never planned to set rates and terms for broadband under the laws that dictated how railroads operated in the 1880s and the phone system in the 1930s. But President Obama decided “net neutrality” was good politics, so he demanded that the commission impose the most extreme form of regulation. Today bureaucrats lobbied by special interests determine what is “fair” and “reasonable” on the Internet, including rates, tariffs and business arrangements. The FCC got thousands of requests for new regulations within weeks of the new rules.

Before Obamanet went into effect, economist Hal Singer of the Progressive Policy Institute predicted in The Wall Street Journal that if price and other regulations were introduced, capital investments by ISPs could quickly fall from the $77 billion invested in 2014—between 5% and 12% a year, according to his forecast.

Read the article “Obamanet is Hurting Broadband” on google.com.