Based on the summary released today, the FCC's National Broadband Plan is, quite simply, a blueprint for a Washington takeover of the Internet. Its initial premise – that broadband Internet is infrastructure "like electricity a century ago" – reduces a vibrant, competitive engine of innovation to an old-fashioned government-regulated utility.

The plan is complete with heavy regulations, including a new wholesale unbundling regime and a vastly expanded successor to the Universal Access Fund to give Internet central planners a vast taxing-and-spending power. The plan even supports explicitly government-run networks (information-age Tennessee Valley Authorities) as part of its effort to guarantee broadband Internet "with sufficient capabilities" that "all should be able to afford."

This is the Internet as a federal entitlement program, and I doubt most Americans would consider that an improvement over the successful free-market, competitive Internet that exists today.