Under FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s proposal, AT&T couldn’t block
users from accessing Netflix or slow down YouTube’s Internet streams.
Nor could it give preferential treatment to calls made with Skype over
those made with Vonage.
Wheeler said the new rules are intended to “preserve the Internet as an open platform for innovation and free expression.”
The proposal, which Wheeler said he will circulate to his fellow
commissioners this week and which would be voted on Feb. 26, represents
the latest effort by the FCC to guarantee so-called “net neutrality”
after two prior efforts were overturned by a federal appeals court.
Unlike those efforts, the FCC has grounded the new rules in its
authority under Title II of the Communications Act, which gives it the
ability to regulate “common carriers” such as traditional telephone and
telegraph providers.
Anticipating a backlash from industry and anti-regulatory
Republicans in Congress, Wheeler noted that the Internet came into being
in part thanks to previous rules set by the FCC and that the wireless
industry has thrived despite having similar rules in place.
Wheeler had telegraphed the new approach to regulating Internet
providers earlier this month in an appearance at the Consumer
Electronics Show in Las Vegas. But the move represents a sharp turnabout
for both him and the agency. Under the Bush administration in the early
2000s the FCC decided to stop applying common carrier regulations to
broadband access. And while the agency had long supported net neutrality
rules, it previously resisted basing them on its authority over common
carriers.
Consumers, Internet companies and even President Obama had urged
the FCC to rethink its approach, and the two other Democrats on the
five-member commission are expected to support Wheeler’s move. But
Republicans in Congress have been working to head off the FCC with their
own net neutrality proposal. Regardless of how that turns out, another
court challenge is all but inevitable.
On Wednesday, consumer
advocates and Internet companies praised Wheeler for listening to their
call to reclassify Internet access as a common carrier service, much
like a utility is treated as a common asset, although they hadn’t yet
seen the proposal and warned that the rules could change between now and
when the agency votes on them in three weeks.
“Title II is
exactly the right law for the FCC to be using for net neutrality,” said
Matt Wood, a policy director at Free Press, a consumer advocacy group.
“Frankly, it’s something we and millions of others been calling for now
for more than decade.”
By contrast, broadband companies,
anti-regulatory groups and some technology advocates decried the
proposal, accusing the FCC of overreaching its authority and warning
that the new regulations would discourage investment in broadband.
Wheeler’s
move to reclassify broadband “is an unjustified, overblown response to
what has in actuality been a by-and-large hypothetical concern” about
blocking or throttling access to websites and services, said Doug Brake,
a telecommunications policy analyst at the Information Technology and
Innovation Foundation, a public policy think tank.
Like previous
net neutrality rules, the new regulations would bar Internet service
providers from blocking or slowing down access to sites or services. It
would also ban them from creating “fast lanes” for their own sites and
services or for partners that paid extra to have their traffic speeded
up.
For the first time, though, the new rules would fully apply to
both landline Internet providers and wireless carriers. Past net
neutrality rules gave more leeway to wireless Internet providers than
wired ones. But in an email describing the new rules, the FCC noted that
some 55 percent of Internet traffic now travels over the cellular
carriers’ networks.
Internet companies were glad to see wireless
access included in the new rules. “There is only one Internet, and users
expect that they be able to access an uncensored Internet regardless of
how they connect,” Michael Beckerman, CEO of the Internet Association,
an industry lobbying group that includes companies such as Google,
Netflix and eBay, said in a statement.
But the CTIA, the wireless
industry trade group, argued that Congress hasn’t given the FCC the
authority to regulate wireless broadband access as a common carrier
service.
“We are concerned that the FCC’s proposed approach could
jeopardize our world leading mobile broadband market and result in
significant uncertainty for years to come,” Meredith Attwell Baker, the
group’s CEO, said in a statement.
The new rules would also give
the FCC the power to oversee interconnection agreements between website
operators and Internet providers. As big Web service providers such as
Google have started to account for larger and larger portions of total
Internet traffic, Internet providers have forced those companies to pay
for upgrading their connections to the Internet companies’ networks.
The
deals came under scrutiny — and were brought into the net neutrality
deliberations — after Netflix CEO Reed Hastings complained last year
that Internet providers including Comcast were intentionally throttling
customers’ access to its videos in an effort to force Netflix to pay to
upgrade its connections to their networks. Netflix ended up succumbing
to those demands — after which, its customers immediately saw their
service improve.
“If such an oversight process had been in place
last year, we certainly would’ve used it,” company spokeswoman Anne
Marie Squeo said in a statement.
Source Article from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AscensionEarth2012/~3/MucYpuKQ0lQ/new-internet-neutrality-fcc-chairman.html
New internet neutrality: FCC chairman proposes strong new rules
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