Friday, June 18, 2010

FCC moves ahead with broadband redefinition

The Federal Communications Commission moved ahead with its plan to regulate broadband Internet service with a 3-2 vote Thursday. "The vote formally begins a period of public comment on an FCC proposal to overturn a previous commission ruling that classified broadband transmission as a lightly regulated information service," Edward Wyatt of The New York Times reports. The reclassification of broadband as a telecommunications service is seen as a key step in FCC's national broadband plan which would bring high-speed Internet access to more rural areas. The commission said the change was needed after a federal court of appeals in April invalidated ruled FCC couldn't mandate network neutrality under the previous approach.

"The commission has said it intends to exempt broadband service from most of the regulatory options it has under the stricter designation, keeping only those regulations that are necessary 'to implement fundamental universal service, competition and market entry, and consumer protection policies,'" Wyatt writes. Opponents of the move say it gives FCC the power to regulate rates charged to consumers by broadband service providers, but Julius Genachowski, the chairman of the commission, denied FCC has any intention to do so.

Genachowski said the commission was seeking comment on three possibilities: "Keeping regulation as it is, imposing a full telecommunications regulatory regime, and a 'third way' approach of limited regulation," Wyatt writes. In her dissenting statement, Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker said the proposal "will place the heavy thumb of government on the scale of a free market to the point where innovation and investment in the ‘core’ of the Net are subjected to the whims of ‘Mother-May-I’ regulators." (Read more)

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