The dull roar of paid advertisements touting the virtues of universal video franchising suggests that legislation to abandon the current system of local community-controlled video franchise licenses probably won't pass into law this year. However, the frenetic pitch of press releases, paid advertising, and mass media attention to the issue of 'Net neutrality suggest that the federal government might actually see some concrete legislative action this year covering 'Net neutrality.

For those who didn't have a chance to read about our already-published position on the 'Net neutrality issue, please click here.

In the past month, the House of Representatives has sent two bills (H.R. 5417 and H.R. 5252) from committee to the house floor for a vote on the issue. The first bill out of committee (H.R. 5252) and now before full Congress authorizes the FCC to police broadband access providers on the 'Net neutrality issue. The most recent bill sent out of committee last week (H.R. 5417) declares that broadband access providers (such as telcos and cable companies) that discriminate against Internet-based content and applications providers (such as Google and Yahoo) would be in violation of federal anti-trust laws. Another house bill (H.R. 5273) is still in committee; it prohibits a "two-tiered" Internet access approach by broadband access providers.

The Senate has three bills in progress. Two of the Senate bills are in committee waiting for a committee vote (S. 2360 and S. 2686) and one bill (S. 2917) hasn't yet made it to committee.

Although we aren't professional political pundits, all the activity around 'Net neutrality suggests that an "up or down vote" will likely happen this year. If the vote is pro-neutrality, then the content and applications providers will likely be very happy. But if the vote is against 'Net neutrality, what will become of "fair and equal access?" We have some ideas on how content and applications providers might respond - and we'll cover one possible dramatic competitive response next time.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Larry Hettick is a principal analyst at Current Analysis.