It seems there is some controversy brewing since the FCC Commission announced the reclassification of Internet Service Providers as utilities. The 3-2 decision was divided along party lines of an entirely Obama nominated commission. Proponents of Net Neutrality are delighted because under the Title II of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 reclassification of The Internet the commission can enforce new rules to protect a free and open Internet:
Bright Line Rules
- No Blocking: broadband providers may not block access to legal content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices.
- No Throttling: broadband providers my not impair or degrade lawful Internet traffic on the basis of content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices.
- No Paid Prioritization: broadband providers my not favor some lawful Internet traffic over other lawful traffic in exchange for consideration of any kind – in other words, no “fast lanes.” The rule also bans ISP’s from prioritizing content and services of their affiliates.
There is certain to be legal action by service providers, with the support of many Republicans in office, to stop the FCC from continuing with its reclassification and what is sure to be future movements by the FCC to regulate ISP’s. As of this moment, Net Neutrality is still up in the air, but there is some subtle context to how the decision came about and why the commission was split.
In recent months even Google, which by most estimates accounts for nearly 20% of the total traffic on the Internet, has done a 180 and began to pressure the commission into not voting to reclassify ISP’s. Most of the reasoning behind the original message of Net Neutrality is in keeping a fair and mostly unregulated market place. The idea being that ISPs couldn’t favor specific services over others. The greatest fear of course being that an ISP could favor its service over another’s by providing poor connectivity to a competitor’s service. In most regions of the US, where infrastructure is alongside the best in the world but access to that infrastructure is largely geographically monopolized, that fear could create egregious anti-trust like behavior from ISPs.
That behavior of course was what Netflix recently accused Verizon of committing. Verizon claimed that Netflix was harming their overall service to all subscribers regardless of whether those users also used Netflix. At the same time though, experts agree that Verizons competitive streaming video service, Redbox, did not have similar poor service. Netflix had to eventually capitulate to demands by Verizon to create backbone connections between the two companies that by Verizon’s word would improve Netflix performance on the Verizon network. Verizon also demanded that Netflix pay for the improvements to the infrastructure so that the Netflix service would have fair and similar performance across the Verizon network.
That’s where Google’s support for Net Neutrality ended.
That’s where Google’s support for Net Neutrality ended. Google has many informal backbone agreements with ISPs. It’s rumored that Google has done so in trade to pay for the massive amounts of traffic that they use but those are mostly rumors. Google does have informal and unregulated co-locations with ISPs though and, as a service provider that primarily works in ads through their free services such as the Android operating system and the infamous Google search engine, Google has also dipped toes into the high speed Internet Access business. It seems that Google does not want its informal agreements to come under public scrutiny and hence the switched sides in the debate.
It’s interesting to note that of three that voted for reclassification, chairman of the commission Tom Wheeler used to work as a lobbyist for cable companies and was formerly the President of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association. That is unusual in Washington politics since the tendency for a company’s former lobbyist is for that lobbyist to continue protecting corporate interests. In Wheeler’s statement released along with the decision Wheeler states that the commission used both private and public input to create the rules and to influence the commission’s majority decision to reclassify ISP’s under Title II. The public had an unprecedented amount of input over the last half year with large writing campaigns, one of which was done at the suggestion of John Oliver during his comedic political show “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” on HBO. The videos of which went viral over YouTube, a Google owned streaming video service.
The assumption is that Netflix will cause traffic congestion at the ISP
Ajit Pai, one of the two FCC commissioners to vote against the reclassification of Internet Service Providers. His professional history includes a position as a corporate lawyer for Verizon that ended in 2003. Between 2003 and his appointment as a commissioner he had several positions for the FCC’s Office of General Counsel. During that time he oversaw regulatory matters for wireless, cable, Internet and other FCC interests. In Pai’s dissenting statement he claims that the FCC’s move away from a bi-partisan history of a soft handed approach was brought on by the demands of President Barak Obama. Whether that is entirely true or not, alongside the public and private sector outcry of the last year, Obama did call for the Title II reclassification.
Pai is a proponent of a free and open Internet but believes Netflix, one of the primary companies involved in the push for the reclassification, has already used open connect caching to effectively create fast lanes for Netflix traffic. The assumption is that Netflix will cause traffic congestion at the ISP and should therefore pay for the upgrades to ISP infrastructure to insure ISPs do not, by default, provide poor service to other services reached over the same Internet service that Netflix is congesting.
It’s interesting to note that Verizon, whom Pai was a lawyer for before 2003, released a sarcastic response to Thursday’s decision calling the FCC’s “throw back Thursday” decision one that will “impose rules on broadband Internet services that were written in the era of the steam locomotive and the telegraph.” To make the claim that Pai voted in Verizon’s best interest would ignore the fact that Wheeler voted for Title II reclassification; but, Pai’s connection to Verizon is an interesting one considering the fears that both he and Verizon Communications claim are possible under such regulation.