Daniel Lyons, a visiting fellow at the American...

Daniel Lyons, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute’s Center for Internet, Communications and Technology Policy, pushed back against the “rhetoric” of House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., in attacking usage-based pricing last week (CD July 30 p13). Eshoo had focused on the preliminary findings of a GAO study she requested and criticized the data caps practice, associating it with net neutrality violations. “It is worthwhile to review what the GAO actually said, and to set the record straight on the issue of usage-based pricing,” Lyons said in an AEI blog post Monday (http://bit.ly/1otNqpt). “There is nothing inherently anticompetitive about usage-based broadband pricing. Rather, it is one of many potential pricing strategies by which a broadband provider can distribute its fixed costs across its customer base.” The GAO preliminary findings offered no definitive look at the practice either way, he said, parsing the results.