FCC Announces Net Neutrality Order for December Meeting
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By Sam Gustin
- December 1, 2010 |
- 12:16 am |
- Categories: Broadband, Media, Net Neutrality, Politics, Wireless
Five years after the federal government first began considering rules designed to keep the internet free from meddling by the huge phone and cable companies, the nation’s top communications regulator is finally set to take action. But the agency’s approach means the case will almost certainly wind up in federal court.
On December 21st, the Federal Communications Commission is set to vote on rules to protect network neutrality, the principle that broadband companies shouldn’t block or degrade rival web content, services or applications. The FCC said Wednesday that Chairman Julius Genachowski would address the topic in a live webcast starting at 10:30 a.m. ET during which he was expected to outline the agency’s approach.
President Obama included net neutrality in his campaign promises, but even before the Republicans took over the House in the November elections, there was fierce resistance from Republicans and members of Obama’s own party.
Genachowski appears to have the votes needed — at least three out of the five commissioners — to establish the new rules under so-called “Title 1″ authority, a centrist approach that shies away from reclassifying broadband as a “Title II” communications service, a move fiercely opposed by the telecommunications industry. Still, any move to establish net neutrality rules will likely cause a political firestorm with Republicans and centrist Democrats in Congress.
On the eve of the decision, a bitter war of words erupted between cable giant Comcast and internet backbone provider Level 3 over broadband policy.
The spat was prompted by revelations that the nation’s largest cable company could interfere with Netflix, the upstart online movie service that competes with Comcast’s own video offering Xfinity. One of Level 3’s biggest clients is Netflix, whose customers account for an estimated 20 percent of net traffic during peak evening hours.
Comcast wants to charge Level 3 more for the increased bandwidth usage; Level 3 doesn’t want to pay. Comcast says it’s a business dispute; Level 3 calls it a matter of internet freedom.
The FCC said it is investigating.
The fight between the two corporate giants provoked an explosive reaction from net neutrality proponents and activist groups who marshaled their forces for a last ditch effort to sway the FCC. In less than 48 hours, over 80,000 people had signed an online petition urging the FCC to act to “stop this type of abuse — and protect Net Neutrality.”
Many advocates of net neutrality believe that the most effective way to ensure internet freedom — in the long term — is through new legislation from Congress. But with anti-regulatory Republicans taking over the House of Representatives there is virtually no chance of that happening for at least two years. So, advocates say, it’s up to Genachowski.
Republicans have been lashing out at possible FCC action for years. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, the outspoken Tennessee Republican who sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee pledged Tuesday to overturn the rules.
“This is a hysterical reaction by the FCC to a hypothetical problem,” said Blackburn. Genachowski “has little if any congressional support for net neutrality.”
Since her election in 2002 to represent the “Volunteer State,” Rep. Blackburn has received $114,000 in campaign payments from AT&T, Verizon, and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association; her second, third, and fifth top career contributors, respectively, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Meanwhile, AT&T met with FCC Chief of Staff Edward Lazarus six times in the last month to make its views on the matter known.
In many ways, the net neutrality argument has mirrored a broader philosophical debate — all too familiar to Americans — about the role of government in the United States.
Huge corporations and their ideological allies have advocated a vision of free market capitalism unfettered by burdensome regulation that, they argue, threatens to hamper their businesses. Public interest groups and consumer advocates have argued that regulation is needed to protect people and the market itself from abuse by the nation’s highly profitable and politically connected cable and telecom companies.
The internet is different from other industries that have become flash-points for the debate over government regulation. There is no catastrophic oil-slick befouling the coastline and devastating local economies. There is no institutionalized system of mortgage fraud or predatory lending. There is no out-of-control speculation on toxic investments that nearly bankrupted the country.
In this case, a de facto state of net neutrality exists on the internet at present.
Most people take this idea for granted every day while using online services, devices, browsers and software. To the big cable and telecom giants like Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and Time Warner Cable, ignorance = money. So, they’ve compared new rules enforcing internet freedom to a “solution without a problem.”
But net neutrality rules are critically important to the health of the internet, advocates argue, because without them cable and telephone giants could block or slow down certain types of content, like bittorrent or YouTube, prevent or discriminate against against certain web services and applications like Netflix or Skype, or even censor free speech on websites they deem objectionable.
They could also try to create a private, ultrafast virtual highway designed for their own next-generation video products — think bandwidth-intensive applications like 3D-video to the home.
This cleaving of the internet could have grave and unintended consequences because it could decrease the incentive and the possibility for smart young entrepreneurs to create the next Google or Facebook or YouTube on the newly “public” internet, as Google CEO Eric Schmidt has taken to calling it.
In short, advocates argue, net neutrality is like a First Amendment for the 21st century: the broadband giants shall not infringe upon the freedom to access the open internet.
For their part, net neutrality opponents seem content simply to ask Americans to trust Comcast, AT&T and Verizon to respect internet openness and freedom, or to be forced to respond to customer outrage.
We’ll self-govern, the cable and telecom giants say.
Ask yourself: do you trust these companies to look out for your rights?
One year ago, the FCC seemed well on its way to implementing basic net neutrality rules and even expanding them to cover wireless as well.
But last April, a federal court ruled that the agency lacked the authority to enforce the principles established in 2004 by then-FCC Chairman Michael Powell, a Bush-appointee. Those simple principles held that consumers had the right to use the devices, software and online services of their choice, and have competition between ISPs. Genachowski had hoped to expand on those, but now even those most basic rights appear to have no basis in law.
Powell’s successor, Bush-appointee Kevin Martin, used those principles in 2008 to sanction cable giant Comcast for blocking peer-to-peer traffic. But the court ruled that Comcast was correct: the Bush-era deregulation of broadband, had, in fact, eviscerated the FCC’s power to enforce the rules.
That leaves the FCC where it is now — largely powerless over internet policy and facing a political juggernaut from Republicans and their well-funded cable and telecom allies. See you in court.
(Updated 12:16 a.m. 12/1 to include FCC announcement.)
(Updated 9:18 a.m. 12/1 to include word of Genachowski webcast)
Photo: FCC head Julius Genachowski told John Heilemann on stage at Web 2.0 Summit 2010 in early November that net neutrality rules were coming. Credit: James Duncan Davidson
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See Also:
- Net Neutrality — Epicenter
- Net Neutrality — Threat Level
- FCC Delays Net Neutrality Vote — Again
- FCC Chief Genachowski on Net Neutrality: Trust Me
- Net Neutrality Groups Push for FCC Action to Buck GOP Tide
- Did Republican House Landslide Kill Net Neutrality?
- Why Google Became A Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey (UPDATED)
- Appeals Court Throttles FCC’s Net Neutrality Authority
- FCC Backs Net Neutrality — And Then Some
Marsha Blackburn Voted FOR:
Omnibus Appropriations, Special Education, Global AIDS Initiative, Job Training, Unemployment Benefits, Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations, Agriculture Appropriations, FY2004 Foreign Operations Appropriations, U.S.-Singapore Trade, U.S.-Chile Trade, Supplemental Spending for Iraq & Afghanistan, Flood Insurance Reauthorization , Prescription Drug Benefit, Child Nutrition Programs, Surface Transportation, Job Training and Worker Services, Agriculture Appropriations, Foreign Aid, Debt Limit Increase, Fiscal 2005 Omnibus Appropriations, Vocational/Technical Training, Supplemental Appropriations, UN “Reforms.” Patriot Act Reauthorization, CAFTA, Katrina Hurricane-relief Appropriations, Head Start Funding, Line-item Rescission, Oman Trade Agreement, Military Tribunals, Electronic Surveillance, Head Start Funding, COPS Funding, Funding the REAL ID Act (National ID), Foreign Intelligence Surveillance, Thought Crimes “Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, Peru Free Trade Agreement, Economic Stimulus, Farm Bill (Veto Override), Warrantless Searches, Employee Verification Program, Body Imaging Screening, Patriot Act extention.
Marsha Blackburn Voted AGAINST:
Ban on UN Contributions, eliminate Millennium Challenge Account, WTO Withdrawal, UN Dues Decrease, Defunding the NAIS, Iran Military Operations defunding Iraq Troop Withdrawal, congress authorization of Iran Military Operations, Withdrawing U.S. Soldiers from Afghanistan.
Marsha Blackburn is my Congressman.
See her unconstitutional votes at :
http://mickeywhite.blogspot.com/2009/09/tn-congressman-marsha-blackburn-votes.html
Mickey
So far, net neutrality has seen the start of some of today’s most influential companies, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, eBay, Twitter, Google… that otherwise may have never seen the light of day if large corporations were allowed to scream foul and protest based on conflict of interest. If neutrality dies, so does the Internet as we know it.
I deplore anything but net neutrality, but I suspect that Comcast’s response is in part about Netflix new “all the streaming you can eat for $7.99″ campaign. Nice for Netflix, but TWENTY PERCENT of the entire capacity of the web? For shitty old flicks? What’s to stop someone else from grabbing FIFTY percent?
Reflect on what that means in the future and clearly some limits are needed. OK “FREE MARKET” (hah!) you have until 12/21 to propose solutions. Or else the government SHOULD do what you WON’T do.
@eliatic: this is where the disconnect is. Level 3 is a backbone provider. Go ahead and repeat that as many times as it takes for you to get it. They’re the company that actually builds the infrastructure Comcast needs to connect its intranet to the internet at large. Comcast is essentially bitching and moaning that its intranet is not up to snuff, and needs handouts to fix it. Fuck that. Fuck Comcast. Decrease the profit margin and executive pay and re-invest in your infrastructure like real companies do. Like I’ve said, if Level 3 opted to play hardball with Comcast, Comcast would be fucked. Level 3 is the only backbone in the U.S. that connects east to west. How long do you think Comcast’s customers would put up with stuttering and hiccups as they tried to route service around Level 3? Keep in mind that this wouldn’t just be Comcast’s internet services suffering. It would be their entire package of services. As I said, they would be completely fucked. They’re overstepping and Level 3 knows it, which is why they brought it out of the shadows.
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I say this as someone who has recently stepped into the business of providing backbone services to “ISPs,” which really aren’t much more than point-delivery men. A disconnect from a large backbone provider like Level 3 would neatly deliver that ISP to its knees. About the only thing preventing backbone providers from becoming ISPs in their own rights are fears of anti-trust lawsuits.
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It’s also important to keep in mind that the burden of investment between the backbones and the ISPs isn’t disproportionate. Backbones just get paid differently and recently the work put into increasing the size and latency of the backbones has prompted ISPs to raise their fees to “keep up with the Joneses,” but they’ve dragged their feet in improving the point-delivery of data. Putting it into perspective: most major metropolitan areas on the east coast and west coast are capable of 1000mb speeds on the backbones. The link east-west is capable of 100mb speeds in most places, and a lot of recent work has been done to bring it up to 1000mb speeds. By comparison, point-delivery is still at 10mb-30mb speeds everywhere. Even distance (ping) can’t account for that, especially as the distance from point-delivery to backbone in most major metropolitan areas is nearing 1 (the ISP itself, natch).
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Beginning to understand why net neutrality is a huge deal?
The goal of Comcast et al is that your internet service will be shaped just like their cable bills… pay X for access only to these sites, 2X for the family or sports package, 3X for premium, and 4X for unfettered access. Its the model they have perfected with cable TV, and they hate the fact they haven’t been able to squeeze you in the same way when it comes to the net to date.
So remember folks, this isn’t just about information being free – its about giant companies wanting to charge you every time you take a shit, and for the size of the shit you take.
Can someone tell me why these guys are allowed to advertise “Unlimited Internet Service” when it clearly has a lot of limits already and more are on the way? I’m paying for certain Mbs/sec connection to the internet. Comcast whines that at night 20% of the traffic is streaming. Waaaaa. If your network can’t handle it then you have no business selling the speeds that are claimed.
Genachowski for President in 2012!