One of the blogosphere’s pet topics, net neutrality, is back in the limelight. When we last heard from our heroes at the FCC, they had adopted a set of four “principles” that basically said service providers should allow their customers access to any 
content and any application on the internet, should allow connection of any device, and should have to compete with other service providers.
That was all well and good, but a principle is a pretty thin reed to rely on and most liberals (as well as most content providers) thought that actual regulations would be a little more comforting. We further thought that although guaranteeing access to any content was fine, we’d also like some assurance that quality of access to content was guaranteed too. After all, access to YouTube isn’t very useful if, say, Verizon decides to slow all YouTube connections to a crawl in order to lure people to its own video site instead.
For their part, service providers thought they should be allowed to favor their own content if they wanted to, and they also wanted to make sure that they still had the ability to manage traffic on their networks. But if the Washington Post is to be believed, they’re not going to get much satisfaction from the new net neutrality plan that will be unveiled tomorrow:
The proposal, to be announced Monday by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, will include an additional guideline for carriers that they make public the way they manage traffic on their network, according to sources at the agency. The additional guideline would be a “sixth principle” to four existing guidelines adopted in 2005 on Internet network operations. A fifth principle is expected to be announced by Genachowski on Monday during a speech at the Brookings Institute that would prohibit the discrimination of applications and services on telecommunications, cable and wireless Internet networks.
That fifth principle is a key victory for content providers (and all us content users). It means that service providers can’t provide faster or slower access to particular sites or applications. And although they’ll be allowed to perform technical traffic management in a content-neutral way, they’ll have to disclose exactly how they’re doing that so that everyone knows beforehand what the rules of the road are.
What’s more, principles are out and rules are in:
The FCC is expected to vote on the proposed rulemaking of so-called net neutrality regulations at its October meeting. That vote will set off a series of regulatory procedures, and a final rule is expected to be introduced in the spring.
Obviously this is cause for only cautious optimism until we see the actual proposed rules. The devil is always in the details, after all. But it’s a good start. If you’re interested in following along, the announcement and subsequent panel discussion will be streamed live on Monday starting at 10 am Eastern.
