4 no-bull facts you need to know about the FCC's Net neutrality proposal

[Commentary] No, the Federal Communications Commission's newly proposed rules for network neutrality don't spell the end of the Internet as we know it. But some of the concern about the proposed rules are valid, in big part because the rules don't address certain issues.

Here are the four key takeaways you need to know:

1. Fast-lane charges stink, and the FCC knows it. On Feb 19, it released a statement saying it intended to revise the rules. Many of the changes involve issues of net neutrality that have come to the fore recently, such as state laws blocking the creation of municipal broadband or the arbitrary blocking of legal content.
2. The FCC is planning to do little about it in the short run. The FCC's open-ended, let's-see-what-happens approach means any regulation designed to protect consumers from arbitrarily tiered pricing will happen in the FCC's own sweet time.
3. The FCC may not do anything about back-end deals. When FCC officials were asked at a briefing whether deals like the Comcast/Netflix peering arrangement would come under scrutiny under the new rules, the short answer was no. The rules, in other words, are still focused on ISP-to-consumer connections, not arrangements between ISPs and content providers.
4. This potentially affects everyone.