The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had a big setback last January as the commission’s open Internet rules were struck down by the court but recently made announcements that new Open Internet regulations are forthcoming. With the strike down last January, the FCC is now going to create a new set of rules on net neutrality that will be able to hold up to against scrutiny by legal means. This was announced by Tom Wheeler, the FCC Chairman.
Collecting comments
In relation to the announcement, the FCC is now busy gathering comments from the public that the Commission will use in formulating the new Open Internet regulations. According to the FCC Chairman, the new rules will disallow Internet service providers (ISPs) from blocking particular websites, require them to reveal how their Internet traffic is managed and prohibit them from manipulating Internet traffic in favor of some websites, such as having some website load faster than others. The commission is also looking into turning back their broadband services restrictions from the local governments to increase competition among Internet service providers.
Other developments
Comcast and AT&T are still abiding with the 2010 FCC ruling despite it being overturned by the court. However, the two companies have also put some policies in place that also go against net neutrality, according to some people.
Netflix and Comcast have come to an agreement last week. Netflix will pay Comcast to have direct access to the latter’s broadband service to increase Netflix’s streaming speeds. The previous set-up was to go through several third parties.
Accordingly, the new rules that FCC are formulating will not be addressing such types of deals, although these deals could likewise influence consumers’ access to different content.
Looking at what the agreement Netflix made with Comcast, some analysts are saying that this type of agreement is plausible since Netflix generates about a third of Internet traffic during peak hours. They added that if the ISPs can charge the content distributors it will allow the ISPs to bring their cost down and reinvest the revenue for better infrastructure.
Just like Netflix, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and other big tech companies already have in place their own deals with the bigger Internet service providers.
On the other hand, consumer advocates are saying that the agreements for direct access to big ISPs might only lead to these ISPs favoring richer content providers. They are also concerned about how the mobile Web, which is not yet fully regulated, will be affected by the new FCC ruling.
It still remains to be seen who will come out victorious in this latest phase of the game. The FCC still has the authority to issue new regulations under Section 706 (under the Telecommunication Act of 1996), and while the statement they recently released was just a proposal, the new set of rules are expected to be available around April.
Photo credit: Taken by Junior Melo under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
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