FCC Gives Up on Net Neutrality Talks

August 6, 2010 By Geoff Duncan

The FCC has called off its meetings with Internet stake-holders on net neutrality after criticism the process wasn't public enough.

The Federal Communications Commission has cancelled its series of closed door meetings with major Internet companies and stakeholders on the topic of network neutrality, on the heels of criticism the process did not have enough public input…and after reports that Google and Verizon were drawing up their own framework/deal stole the show.

The meetings had been intended to draw up a regulatory framework for protecting consumer access to content, applications, and services on the Internet—both via wire lines and mobile devices—while still providing an environment that will attract the investment necessary to build out broadband infrastructure in the United States. The resulting framework would then be presented to Congress as a blueprint for net neutrality legislation.

There is no indication yet how the FCC will proceed. The agency could simply attempt to directly regulate Internet access providers—an authority that has been signifiantly undercut by Comcast’s court victory regarding P2P blocking. However, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has indicated he believes the agency has sufficient regulatory authority to enforce many net neutrality terms. However, for the FCC to have full authority to regulate broadband in the United States, Congress will likely have to pass legislation granting such authority to the agency.

News of the FCC giving up on net neutrality hearings comes just as news has been breaking that Google and Verizon have been working on their own net neutrality deal. Although both companies deny they have been investigating a business relationship that would give Google priority access to Verizon networks, the companies apparently plan to unveil their own proposal for net neutrality legislation…and these sideline talks have apparently undermined the FCC’s own efforts to find common ground in the industry.

Showing 11 comments

Bart at 7:24am 7th August 2010 This IS all about the money until one party has legislative control over another, then other factors will be considered. If there is no net neutrality, a very popular but controversial blog hosted at Blogger, A Google enterprise, might get better delivery than one hosted elsewhere. Without net neutrality, Google services might be delivered at thrice the speed with thrice the bandwidth available elsewhere. Now the TOS at Blogger becomes a hammer hanging over the publisher's head. In this case its no longer about the money. It's about corporate control of free speech.
MiserableGuinea at 6:45am 7th August 2010 Anything the government touches turns to crap. Let the free market work and tell the government to keep its slimey hands off the Internet.
1. @Darr247 at 7:13am 7th August 2010 says the guy as he types on a keyboard with an FCC sticker on the back of it, clicks Submit with a mouse with an FCC sticker on it, sending the message through a computer with FCC stickers all over it, out through a NIC with an FCCID sticker on it, then through a router with an FCCID sticker on it and out through wires built using FCC regulations. NO CONTENT FILTERING, from ANY source. Tiered service as far as paying for different levels of bandwidth consumption would be a great financial incentive to build fat pipes. But it should be measured only by download... if you're producing content (uploading), that should not count against your bandwidth cap. You want to download a movie every night from netflix instead of stopping at blockbuster on the way home, fine - you pay for that convenience... but people who download a couple GB a month should not have to pay the same monthly rate as someone downloading 2 DVDs worth (that would be ~6-10GB) of data every day.
Steven at 6:41am 7th August 2010 @Dan Thanks for the laugh. Imagine, for a minute, you are wearing a tinfoil hat. The only thing you wrote that was even close to correct was this is all about the money. Of couse it is about the money. It is called capitalism. Every thing else was born from paranoid delusions. BTW: look at how much Google is paying for lobbyists. It is in the millions as well.
Robert at 6:27am 7th August 2010 Big corporations cant wait to kill net neutrality...they lick their greedy lips everytime they win a battle against the freedom of the net. Big corporations will make the mafia look like childs play, if they win they will control every aspect of the internet from downloading to web surfing. They will come up with all kinds of excuses to kill net neutrality when it is really about control and money.
Dan at 5:55am 7th August 2010 Net Neutrality is the Freedom of Speech of our day. The service providers (AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, etc) want content providers (Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress, etc) to pay for delivery speed of their content, and the end users to pay for what they have access to, and how fast it is delivered. This is all about the money. This is all about the service providers maximizing revenue on an already profitable service. Imagine paying $30 per month for access to "main stream sites" such as Google and Yahoo, but having to pay $40 if you want to get to Facebook and Twitter, yet $60 if you want access to all of the internet. Just like your cable or dish is now. Basic Cable vs Premium packages. This will also allow providers to selectively block anything that they wish. Say goodbye to sites such as Opensecrets, wikileaks, and the like as well. This is a huge issue folks, the corporate service providers are attempting to take full control over the most powerful information and communication tool in the history of mankind. Make no mistakes, as Bean said, this is all about the money. Take a look at how much money AT&T and Verizon are spending on lobbyists and campaign donations, it is in the millions. What do you think that is for? http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php
guest at 4:58am 7th August 2010 they allready throttle their users, especially the cable companies. it's all about money. they want to be able to block any content that they do not profit from. Google already controls the content on it's search engine. How much did Google profit from the Gulf oil spill? Bottom line they don't want you to have access to something they can't profit from.
nutz at 4:33am 7th August 2010 All these company want to do is increase profits without expenses meaning the average user will have his bandwidth throttled to allow additional customers
Bogzy at 4:10am 7th August 2010 Internet is already fast enough to handle everything but videos and games but in several years the bandwidth could go wide enough to cover this last issue.
1. Bean at 4:30am 7th August 2010 I would disagree. Current consumer bandwidth could stand a significant buff. Not only for existing content but to keep up with countries much much smaller economically. Regardless, however, the US internet, without appropriate regulation, is going to become nothing more than a one way medium much like the way television currently exists. Your provider wants to make money not only from its subscribers but by content providers. They'll have an income stream on both sides much like current cable TV providers. If content providers are unable to pay, their content will be significantly difficult to access if not impossible. The fact that the FCC has canceled its meetings and Google & Verizon are working on their own content prioritization deal shows that the FCC lacks the regulatory powers to administer in favor of the public's interests. As such you can expect that as more deals between companies occur, the general public will be at a greater disadvantage. And you'll find that more and more of the features already freely available in any network will become "value added" services for which the public will have to pay to use. In essence you're not paying for these "features". You'll pay your service provide to stop actively breaking the feature to prevent you from using it. That's not service. That's a shake down.
  1. ApostasyUSA at 10:07am 7th August 2010 Agreed! The whole QoS vs. net-neutrality is the real lie here. When we order internet service, the service is described to us as "52Mb per second" or something like that. If the user decided to use their bandwidth for phone calls that's their prerogative. The user downloading with bit torrent or the like will still be limited to the bandwidth they subscribed for. If the network is saturated, I expect my VoIP to be useless - along with a lot of other things. Within my private network, I can establish QoS standards, but those standards are not ubiquitous by any means on the public Internet. If an ISP believes it needs to implement traffic shaping because they lack sufficient capacity, then the answer is not to implement traffic shaping, but to add more capacity. The ISP's are wrong anyways because the Internet is telecommunications. The internet is just like telephone lines. We (the users) dial a number (IP address) of the website we are interested in seeing. Phone #'s look like (607)667-9999. IP addresses look like 234.354.354.345. We the users have the right to dial (search) any number (website) we see fit and have a quality connection unrestricted based on what we choose to find.