The day Internet activists have long waited for is finally here: The Federal Communications Commission is slated Thursday to approve strong new rules to guarantee net neutrality.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler laid out the outlines of the new rules earlier this month. As would previous efforts to ensure an open Internet, they would bar broadband service providers from blocking or slowing access to particular sites or services or providing so-called fast lanes to certain favored sites and services. What s different about the new rules is that the FCC plans to ground them in its authority under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, which gives the agency the ability to regulate so-called common carriers, companies like traditional telephone and telegraph operators.
The only real question about the new regulations is how far they will go. There has reportedly been a controversy in recent days about whether or not the rules will end up covering interconnection agreements. Those deals, typically between broadband service providers like Comcast and Internet companies like Google, became controversial when Netflix charged that service providers were throttling the speeds of its video streams sent to its subscribers in an effort to make it pay the providers for faster connections.
Netflix had lobbied the FCC to include oversight of such deals in its new net neutrality rules. But FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, one of three Democrats on the commission whose vote will be needed to pass the rules, apparently got cold feet in recent days about including such authority in the regulations.
In addition to the net neutrality rules, the FCC approved two petitions by local, public broadband providers to pre-empt state laws that bar them from offering Internet access outside of their state-circumscribed service areas.
You can watch the meeting live here via C-SPAN.
Photo: FCC Chairman Wheeler at Thursday s meeting (C-SPAN screen capture).
