FCC gets Technical Assistance for Network Neutrality Proceeding

The Federal Communications Commission announced that the Chief of the FCC's Office of Engineering & Technology (OET) has established a Technical Advisory Process to ensure that decisions in the Commission's proceeding on the open Internet reflect a thorough understanding of current technology and future technology trends. The process will provide an inclusive, open, and transparent forum for obtaining the best technical data and insights from a broad range of stakeholders. The Technical Advisory Process was called for in the FCC's October 22, 2009 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. OET has now established a technical working group comprised of engineers and technologists from across the FCC's bureaus and offices to receive information from stakeholders on the technical issues in the open Internet proceeding. The working group will hold ex parte meetings with engineers and other interested parties to understand the range of views in the technical community on the issues presented by the open Internet rulemaking, identify any areas of common ground between stakeholders, and clarify the scope of key differences. In addition, FCC engineers from the working group will be integrated into other teams within the Commission considering the various issues raised in the open Internet proceeding. The Technical Advisory Process will include a workshop on December 8, 2009 starting at 10 a.m. in the Commission meeting room, which will be open to the public and live streamed via the Internet. The workshop will consist of tutorial presentations by experts on network management practices for various Internet access service delivery platforms, followed by questions from the Commission's technical working group and members of the public.