netneutrality

The 99 page dissertation on Internet regulation released by the FCC yesterday only contains 2 pages of actual draft rules, which rely almost entirely on what the FCC considers reasonable on any given day. For example…

A person engaged in the provision of fixed broadband Internet access service…shall not engage in commercially unreasonable practices. Reasonable network management shall not constitute a commercially unreasonable practice.

Actually, that’s not an example. That’s the sum total of chairman Tom Wheeler’s proposed net neutrality rule.… More

Wheeler lays out his position.

The FCC voted 3–2 along party lines today to start the formal debate on whether and how Internet access and traffic should be regulated. Looked at another way, though, the deck is pre-stacked in so far as the discussion starts with a proposed set of poorly defined regulations that would have the FCC managing the Internet on a day to day basis.

That doesn’t mean the outcome is predetermined. The broad range of questions the FCC is asking – including whether consumer Internet access or interconnection and traffic handling for content providers should be regulated as a traditional common carrier utility – leaves the door open to substantial changes before anything is finalised.… More

We finally know where FCC chairman Tom Wheeler stands on network neutrality rules: squarely in front of Washington’s army of industry lobbyists, leading the way. When rumors began circulating last week that commissioners were looking at draft rules that would allow Internet service providers to charge web-based businesses extra for speeding their packets along to consumers, Wheeler’s response was exactly what you would expect from a man who spent 20 years as a telecoms lobbyist himself…

There has been a great deal of misinformation that has recently surfaced regarding the draft Open Internet Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that we will today circulate to the Commission…The Notice does not change the underlying goals of transparency, no blocking of lawful content, and no unreasonable discrimination among users established by the 2010 Rule.

The fight over who pays for the Internet has moved deeper inside the network. Cogent and Level 3 are two companies that provide much of the backbone transport for major last mile Internet service providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon. They’re accusing the big ISPs of, in effect, holding millions of consumers hostage in order to force others – backbone companies and content providers like Netflix, in particular – to pay the cost of upgrading their systems to support the continuing boom in Internet traffic.… More

One octopus looks pretty much like any other.

In trying to figure out what the next network neutral battle is going to look like, I read through the 81 page federal appeals court ruling that tossed out the Federal Communications Commission’s first stab at writing those rules. The majority decision reads like a prescription for what the FCC needs to do in order to impose net neutrality regulations, something chairman Tom Wheeler has taken to heart.… More