Broadband News
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FCC consults on ‘third way’ of tighter broadband rules without price control
21 Jun 2010 | 08.35 Europe/London
The FCC has begun a public consultation process on three options to give the body, what is describes as, the necessary framework to provide affordable, high quality, competitive and innovative broadband services.
The options include doing nothing, totally reclassifying broadband services within existing tougher telecommunications services and a ‘third way’, which sits somewhere in the middle. Under the ‘third way’ broadband services would be reclassified but, importantly, the FCC would not assume control over the price of broadband and nor would it seek to regulate control over internet content.
ISP opponents
Although this would appear to have been a compromise move, enabling the FCC to ensure broadband services are widely distributed and based around net neutrality, so one person’s traffic is not prioritised against another, ISPs are adamant the plans will neither work nor make it past the inevitable legal challenges.
AT&T has described the FCC’s move as “impossible to justifty” and the Verizon simply summed them up as “a terrible idea”.
The ISPs are troubled by the notion of more FCC control over their broadband operations, particularly having the ability to shape traffic taken away from them. They see this as essential to running a service in which high priority tasks, such as VoIP or streaming, are prioritised at the cost of a slight delay in people receiving an email or a web page.
Opponents of the scheme have already produced a report which suggests the proposed new rules would cause a 10% dip in investment in broadband and could cost 500,000 jobs by 2015.
The American public has until July 15th to respond to the FCC proposals. The consultation process nearly did not happen and was only approved by a split of 3 to 2 of the 5 voting commissioners.
The options include doing nothing, totally reclassifying broadband services within existing tougher telecommunications services and a ‘third way’, which sits somewhere in the middle. Under the ‘third way’ broadband services would be reclassified but, importantly, the FCC would not assume control over the price of broadband and nor would it seek to regulate control over internet content.
ISP opponents
Although this would appear to have been a compromise move, enabling the FCC to ensure broadband services are widely distributed and based around net neutrality, so one person’s traffic is not prioritised against another, ISPs are adamant the plans will neither work nor make it past the inevitable legal challenges.
AT&T has described the FCC’s move as “impossible to justifty” and the Verizon simply summed them up as “a terrible idea”.
The ISPs are troubled by the notion of more FCC control over their broadband operations, particularly having the ability to shape traffic taken away from them. They see this as essential to running a service in which high priority tasks, such as VoIP or streaming, are prioritised at the cost of a slight delay in people receiving an email or a web page.
Opponents of the scheme have already produced a report which suggests the proposed new rules would cause a 10% dip in investment in broadband and could cost 500,000 jobs by 2015.
The American public has until July 15th to respond to the FCC proposals. The consultation process nearly did not happen and was only approved by a split of 3 to 2 of the 5 voting commissioners.