FCC moving forward on net neutrality despite court ruling and public opinion

FCC pushes forward with broadband agenda [CNET News]

Despite a ruling from the D.C. Court of Appeals earlier this week that found the FCC does not have the ability to regulate service providers' traffic management systems, the Commission indicates they plan to move ahead on their plans to implement their national broadband plan and create net neutrality regulations. In a statement issued this week, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said that the court's decision, "does not change our broadband policy goals, or the ultimate authority of the FCC to act to achieve those goals.The court did not question the FCC's goals; it merely invalidated one technical, legal mechanism for broadband policy chosen by prior commissions."

The FCC's proposal to create net neutrality rules last fall has progressed to the point that the Commission is reviewing the public comment it has received on the issue and is drafting the regulations. 

Even though net neutrality advocates have lobbied for several years to get to this point in the process, the final adoption of regulations doesn't appear to be a popular subject among the American citizenry. Rasmussen Reports released a public opinion survey this week that indicates the majority of American's oppose net neutrality regulations - by a margin of 53 percent to 27 percent with 19 percent undecided. When asked about traffic management for those consuming large amounts of bandwidth, the respondents were more closely divided with 34 percent favoring the practice with 38 percent opposed. Another 28 percent were undecided.  Of course, I'm not sure how much of an explanation of the issues was given to the respondents and these are indeed complex issues.

Comments

[Paul Templeton]

I for one am glad the FCC wasn't discouraged by the recent court decision and is still moving forward with implementing net neutrality rules.
If ISP's would design their networks with the idea that the future is high bandwidth applications such as two way HD video and server housed online games as other countries do they wouldn't have to worry about bottle necks cause by a few people making full use of the bandwidth they paid for.
Of course the real goal could be to restrict competition from things such as streaming video and the "piggy customer" complaint might just be a convenient excuse.

[Jlspring]

In this case "deregulation" means regulation by people not accountable to the general public. Honestly I never thought Insight would be in on this. The speed and value of your service is one of the main reasons I wanted to move back to Evansville 3 years ago. When AT&Ts Ed Whitacre criticized network neutrality and said, "we don't call it cashin' in. We call it 'deregulation'" I switched my mobile service to Credo.