Senators renew quest for Net neutrality rules

The Net neutrality skirmish that swallowed up so much of Congress' technopolitical agenda last year may be gearing up for a comeback. A pair of senators who led the divisive push for the new regulations want everyone to know they haven't forgotten the cause.

Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) aired their views in a joint letter (PDF) filed with the Federal Communications Commission just before the Monday deadline for remarks on an open inquiry into "broadband industry practices."

The senators said they were pleased that the FCC was showing interest in the issue but "would have preferred the commission take the more concrete step of proposing rules to guarantee Internet freedom."

Internet freedom, in the senators' view, is the idea that a broadband operator like Comcast or AT&T should be legally prohibited from charging, say, YouTube extra fees to have its services prioritized over other online video sites. In recent years, cable and telephone companies have said it may be necessary to pursue such a business model to recover investments in new infrastructure, and they don't want regulators dictating how they manage their pipes.

Back in January, Dorgan and Snowe reintroduced their Internet Freedom Preservation Act, which would bar such arrangements. (A Republican-controlled Congress repeatedly defeated similar efforts last year.) The senators said they would still push for passage of that bill but called on the FCC to take "affirmative action" to reinstate "nondiscrimination rules that applied to Internet providers for years."

The FCC, for its part, has already adopted four "broadband connectivity principles" in summer 2005, which dictate consumers should generally be allowed to access the Web applications of their choosing and hook up the devices they please. But Chairman Kevin Martin agreed in March to open an official inquiry into whether stronger language should be added--drawing complaints from the FCC's two Democratic commissioners, who wanted a bolder commitment on the spot.

Martin has made it clear he believes no new regulations are needed and that his agency already has ample authority to police any complaints about discrimination that arise. The Federal Trade Commission recently reached similar conclusions after finishing its own inquiry. That report, however, doesn't appear to be derailing plans by Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) to reintroduce his own Net neutrality bill sometime after Labor Day.

The senators' letter was one of more than 27,000 comments that have poured into the FCC since it opened its inquiry into the issue this spring. According to a statement Tuesday from the advocacy group Free Press, which also supports strict nondiscrimination regulations, more than 95 percent of those filings came from individuals on its side.

[dondarko]

what everyone needs to consider is...

that American taxpayer has probably subsidized at least a good chunk of the cost of building "their infrastructure" over the years. I don't have exact numbers but if someone can point us in the right direction I would be glad to look at them.<br /><br />Anyways, the main point is that each American taxpayer owns a piece of whatever percentage of that network(depending on how large government/taxpayer subsidy was).

[dondarko]

also

American taxpayer(U.S. Government) is the inventor of "the internet" and in essense has provided another medium for which companies can charge ridiculous amount of money for crappy service when compared to the rest of the world (for more of that see the recent publication of speeds and their costs around the world <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6900697.stm" target="_newWindow">http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6900697.stm</a>). <br /><br />Same goes for wireless network heres in the U.S. All of our phones are lockdown and numerous features disabled. There are few exceptions with some phones with certain carriers like T-Mobile. But for the main part we have the crappiest phones on the market (iPhone excluded, besides not really wanted in the EU or Asia) while the rest of the world advances away. While our Japanese counterparts are watching live streamed coverage of any cable channel, while riding the subway to work, we are sitting here and watching crappy looking image of what is supposed to be "the hottest video" on Verizon or Cingular network(iPhone might change that how AT&#38;T behaves in future with internet and application access on all their feature ready phones) on a crappy phone.