FCC To Announce New Net Neutrality Rules Monday [Broadband Reports]
Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski has laid out plans to add two new network nondiscrimination principles earlier today in a speech to the Brookings Institution. Currently the FCC has adopted four network nondiscrimination principles, which have been interpreted as allowing network users to access any legal Internet content without interference from the network operator. The FCC has enforced these principles periodically, even though they've never been formally adopted as FCC rules in a rule-making process.
Chairman Genachowski's speech indicates that in addition to adding a fifth and sixth principle of network nondiscrimination, that a formal rule-making process will take place formalizing the principles. Here's how Genachowski described his proposal for fifth principle:
The fifth principle is one of non-discrimination -- stating that broadband providers cannot discriminate against particular Internet content or applications. This means they cannot block or degrade lawful traffic over their networks, or pick winners by favoring some content or applications over others in the connection to subscribers’ homes. Nor can they disfavor an Internet service just because it competes with a similar service offered by that broadband provider. The Internet must continue to allow users to decide what content and applications succeed.
In the process of considering such a principle, the Chairman acknowledged the need for network operators be taken into consideration to reasonably manage network traffic. I've written here extensively about the need for network operators to make decisions about dealing with applications that have an endless appetite for bandwidth, and therefore affect other users' Internet speeds if left unmanaged. These management techniques serve to benefit all of a network users, even the ones using the applications consuming a disproportionate amount of bandwidth.
Chairman Genachowski also outlined a sixth principle in his morning speech:
The sixth principle is a transparency principle -- stating that providers of broadband Internet access must be transparent about their network management practices. Why does the FCC need to adopt this principle? The Internet evolved through open standards. It was conceived as a tool whose user manual would be free and available to all. But new network management practices and technologies challenge this original understanding. Today, broadband providers have the technical ability to change how the Internet works for millions of users -- with profound consequences for those users and content, application, and service providers around the world.
It's truly refreshing that the Chairman has initiated this discussion in an open and honest atmosphere. I wonder if network operators really have the ability to change how the Internet works through reasonable network management. Simply allocating the amount of bandwidth consumed by various protocols on the Internet at any given moment doesn't impact the way those protocols function - it just affects how fast particular packets arrive at their destination on the network. While it's not yet clear how extensive Chairman Genachowski interprets the specifics of this principle, there are legitimate concerns that publishing network management information simply would provide a road map to those who might wish to circumvent useful, reasonable management practices.
Whenever we evaluate new Internet regulations, we need to take care to evaluate whether they will truly improve the online experience for most Americans and ask the question if the proposed new regulations are merely a solution in search of a problem. In my view, there have been very few, concrete examples of unreasonable network discrimination practices that some proponents of this initiative can point to as a need for proactive regulation, and in those isolated incidents, the FCC has taken strong action using its existing network nondiscrimination principles. I know the cable industry looks forward to working with the Commission to carefully consider the implications - including potentially unknown results - of any and all new regulations being considered for the Internet.
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