Europe, America legislate on net neutrality

There’s no topic guaranteed to spark heated debate quite like net neutrality – a principle that, in rather simple terms, requires all kinds of web traffic to be treated equally, assuming it’s legal of course.

This tricky subject has been brought up in the US Congress no fewer than three times since 2006, and in eight different bills, none of which has yet made it into law. Now the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has taken the bull firmly by the horns, voting last week to draw up legislation on net neutrality – as if the FCC didn’t have enough on its plate putting together an American national broadband plan, which it must complete before February 2010.

The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), is the start of the formal process by which the FCC will turn its six proposed rules into full-blown regulations. The desired end-result is legislation that would prevent ISPs from discriminating against particular internet content or applications, while requiring operators to maintain transparency over their network congestion policies.

The draft rules comprise a series of “dos” and “don’ts” for providers of broadband internet access service, The “don’ts” embody the FCC’s existing net neutrality principles, which state that an ISP must not:

1) prevent any of its users from sending or receiving the lawful content of the
user’s choice over the Internet;
2) prevent any of its users from running the lawful applications or using the lawful services of the user’s choice;
3) prevent any of its users from connecting to and using on its network the user’s choice of lawful devices that do not harm the network; or
4) deprive any of its users of the user’s entitlement to competition among network providers, application providers, service providers, and content providers.

In addition, the FCC is proposing two new rules, which would require providers of broadband internet access service to:

5) treat lawful content, applications, and services in a nondiscriminatory manner.
6) disclose such information concerning network management and other practices as is reasonably required for users and content, application, and service providers to enjoy the protections specified in this rulemaking.

All of the above conditions are “subject to reasonable network management”. What exactly constitutes “reasonable” is something the FCC will need to decide, along with how these rules will apply to the internet accessed over wireless networks.

It’s not clear when the FCC will vote on the final rules, but this is unlikely to happen before mid 2010, because the comment period runs until 14 January, with reply comments due by 5 March. There is guaranteed to be plenty of input. Indeed, many key players have already marked out their positions, with content providers like Amazon, Google and Facebook speaking up in favour of the proposed regulations, while the big telecoms and cable companies AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon, oppose them.

Net neutrality lite

Meanwhile in Europe, where consumers have been exposed to bandwidth caps and traffic management for longer, the European Parliament has already made a ruling on net neutrality. Last week the Telecoms Reform Package was passed, which provides (amongst lots of other things) additional powers for national regulatory authorities to intervene when the “openness” of the internet is threatened. Here’s what the European Commission had to say:

“Internet service providers have powerful tools at their disposal that allow them to differentiate between the various data transmissions on the internet, such as voice or ‘peer-to-peer’ communication. Even though traffic management may allow premium high-quality services (such as IPTV) to develop and can help ensure secure communications, the same techniques may also be used to degrade the quality of other services to unacceptably low levels or to strengthen dominant positions on the market. That is why, under the new EU rules, national telecoms authorities will have the powers to set minimum quality levels for network transmission services so as to promote “net neutrality” and “net freedoms” for European citizens.”

The new rules also require ISPs to be transparent about their services. Consumers must be informed before signing a contract about the nature of the service to which they are subscribing, including details of any traffic management techniques and their impact on service quality, as well as any other limitations, such as bandwidth caps.

“Under the reformed rules, the Commission will be Europe’s first line of defence when it comes to net neutrality”, said EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding.

Tags: America, Europe, FCC, net neutrality, Traffic management, USA