FCC to Take on Telecoms in Fight for the Future of the Internet

By Art Brodsky, Public Knowledge. Posted September 21, 2009.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski didn’t mention Net Neutrality when he went before a House subcommittee on Thursday (Sept. 17). The subject will be front and center on Monday (Sept. 21) when Genachowski is expected to give a speech announcing the Commission will vote in October to start a Net Neutrality rulemaking.

Combined with the announcement at the hearing from House Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) that he supports Net Neutrality and will support the Net Neutrality legislation proposed by Reps. Edward Markey (D-MA) and Anna Eshoo (D-CA), it looks as if the issue which many people waited for a while to take off is finally gaining some momentum.

This will be the largest telecom fight in 14 years, and one well worth fighting. The Internet was created at a time when it was against the law for telephone companies to play favorites with the traffic that went over its network. Now, there are cable and wireless networks, along with the telephone company broadband platform that all have some piece of connections to the Internet, and no legal protections apply to any of it.

In a sense, this FCC rulemaking would help return to the basic legal principles that allowed the Internet to grow and to thrive, and to the environment which led to all the investment, not only in the network, but to all of the software and services on the “edge” of the network that we have today, whether it’s a Google or Yahoo! or Amazon, or any of the hundreds and thousands of small, innovative companies. The proverbial “level playing field” finally will be leveled by rules or by a law, and not at the whim of the telecom companies which control the on-ramps to the Internet in a market in which there is very little competition.

Make no mistake. Simply because the FCC announces an action, the contest won’t be confined to the Commission. Congress will become involved, and from the comments at the hearing of the Communications Subcommittee, the Republicans are ready to rumble. The Republican members, as usual, were forthright in expressing their opposition, as a half-dozen of them did, warning about threats to innovation and investment from an open, non-discriminatory Internet. It’s a tough argument unless you’re a phone or cable company or are subservient to one.

It would have been nice at the hearing had someone backed up Waxman’s announcement with some of their own thoughts. Waxman’s announcement was closely held, but even so, it would have provided a good opportunity for the Democratic members to support publicly the concept of Net Neutrality. Waxman’s announcement will also serve to put the telephone company Democratic acolytes on the Commerce Committee, like AT&T’s Reps. Charlie Gonzales or Verizon’s Eliot Engel, on notice that they may be required to choose between their Committee chairman and their corporate sponsors.

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