New net neutrality proposal: What's in this thing?

FCC chairman outlined many principles aimed at pleasing everyone, but details remain scarce

Julius Genachowski’s grand unveiling of his new net neutrality proposal yesterday was long on broad principles, short on details.

The Federal Communications Commission chairman tried to include something for everyone in the net neutrality debate, but he didn’t go into detail about how he would reconcile the two sides’ differences. The most glaring example of this was Genachowski’s assertion that his proposal “is grounded in a variety of provisions of the communications laws, but would not reclassify broadband as a Title II telecommunications service.”

The problem with this is that for meaningful net neutrality regulations to be enforced, the FCC would almost certainly have to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service. That’s because the Washington, D.C. appeals court ruled this past spring that the FCC did not have the authority to regulate ISP network management under its current legal framework. This left the FCC with two options: It could either wait on Congress to act on net neutrality legislation or it could change the classification of broadband services from information services to telecommunications services, thus giving them the authority to impose some common carrier rules on ISPs.

How the FCC could still move on net neutrality

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“Reasonable network management is an important part of the proposal, recognizing that what is reasonable will take account of the network technology and architecture involved,” he said. “Our work has also demonstrated the importance of business innovation to promote network investment and efficient use of networks, including measures to match price to cost such as usage-based pricing.”

But even though Genachowski gave some hints as to what his final proposal would look like, he left so much out of his talk yesterday that we’ll have to likely wait until the final version comes out during its scheduled meeting on December 21. But no matter what the final proposal looks like, it likely won’t get the vote of Republican commissioner Robert McDowell, who not only opposes the measure but has also accused Genachowski of “pushing a small group of hand-picked industry players toward a ‘choice’ that smacks more of coercion than consensus or compromise.”

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