FCC’s New New Net Neutrality Compromise Is Better: Tech News « The Federal Communications Commission today said it would vote on rules to prevent ISPs from discriminating against the bits flowing across their networks, but it wouldn’t publish the full text of those rules until a few days after its open meeting tomorrow.
The delay is a result of the FCC compromise with Democratic commissioners who have said they’d rather sink the network neutrality rules than vote for a bad plan having to address any dissenting views from the commissioners in the order. While the changes outlined in a call today with senior FCC officials are an improvement over the ones proposed three weeks ago by Chairman Julius Genachowski, it’s not clear yet if it will result in a Merry Christmas for content and application providers. In the call, the two officials laid out the tweaks to the plan, of which the major aspect is that it will make the distinction that broadband is an access service as opposed to an information service. Related GigaOM Pro Content (sub req’d): Who Wins and Loses Under the FCC’s Net Neutrality Rules: Tech News « After the Federal Communication Commission released the complete version of its first set of so-called network neutrality rules last Thursday afternoon, I read the full order to understand what the FCC has created.
In short, the rules: Protect the current state of the Internet;Are ambiguous, and hence less protective of the mobile future for the web;Show that the FCC punted on pretty much every challenging issue that lay before it, from requiring open network provisions on wireless networks to allowing managed services provided by ISPs. For those wondering how we got here, check out our timeline and links to the original FCC proposal from 2009 and a later proposal from Google and Verizon that became the framework for the Congressional bill that subsequently became the framework for the compromise order. Yes, By God We’re Still Talking About Net Neutrality: Tech News « Tomorrow, the Federal Communications Commission will unveil and vote on its regulations for preventing ISPs from discriminating on packets traveling across their networks (yes, it did this last September, but the issue of network neutrality is like tech policy’s version of the movie Groundhog Day).
We’ve covered the gist of the rules as explained earlier this month in a speech by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski: rules that saw him cater to the telecommunications providers by allowing paid prioritization, condoning usage-based billing and ignoring the issue of network neutrality on wireless networks. While GigaOM believes that network neutrality is a necessary evil because of a lack of competition, it’s an issue that won’t go away even after the FCC issues its order.
Both sides came out fighting this morning with Al Franken, a Democratic Senator writing in the Huffington Post: Theopeninter.net, A Visual Guide To Net Neutrality.