This is how I see it.
The FCC was faced with two eventualities after last month's federal appeals court decision.
1. Regulate the traffic and not the pipes
Allow Comcast and the other broadband providers to regulate traffic on their services. This would have created faster service for the average consumer. It would have also created a "survival of the richest" system within the "pipes" that the broadband providers were regulating. Internet companies rich enough to pay would receive better bandwidth and those who couldn't pay would be shoved into the slow lane. Comcast's regulation on the economic system living inside of its "pipes" would have had the same effect as a government regulation.
2. Regulate the "pipes" but not the traffic
Reclassify broadband service as a telecommunications service. Once this occurs, the FCC can apply telephone regulations to broadband. This decision allows the free market to work inside of the systems that Comcast and other broadband services own. The prices paid for this decision are overloaded networks and a possible loss of innovative power for the broadband carriers.
In capsulated form this means that option 1 turned Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T into broadband governments with the power to regulate according to the whims of their shareholders. Option 2 gives the government power to regulate the "pipes" which carry the Internet.
Both decisions were wrong for different reasons. I would have preferred a decision that found a middle ground between both extremes. The compromise solution for this issue would have allowed the broadband providers to regulate their traffic, but within acceptable boundaries written by the FCC.
When you give the government an inch, they never give it back. We can only put pressure on our elected representatives to use that power wisely and hope they listen.
FCC details plan to reassert authority over Internet
1. Regulate the traffic and not the pipes
Allow Comcast and the other broadband providers to regulate traffic on their services. This would have created faster service for the average consumer. It would have also created a "survival of the richest" system within the "pipes" that the broadband providers were regulating. Internet companies rich enough to pay would receive better bandwidth and those who couldn't pay would be shoved into the slow lane. Comcast's regulation on the economic system living inside of its "pipes" would have had the same effect as a government regulation.
2. Regulate the "pipes" but not the traffic
Reclassify broadband service as a telecommunications service. Once this occurs, the FCC can apply telephone regulations to broadband. This decision allows the free market to work inside of the systems that Comcast and other broadband services own. The prices paid for this decision are overloaded networks and a possible loss of innovative power for the broadband carriers.
In capsulated form this means that option 1 turned Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T into broadband governments with the power to regulate according to the whims of their shareholders. Option 2 gives the government power to regulate the "pipes" which carry the Internet.
Both decisions were wrong for different reasons. I would have preferred a decision that found a middle ground between both extremes. The compromise solution for this issue would have allowed the broadband providers to regulate their traffic, but within acceptable boundaries written by the FCC.
When you give the government an inch, they never give it back. We can only put pressure on our elected representatives to use that power wisely and hope they listen.
FCC details plan to reassert authority over Internet
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