How the FCC can best regulate the Internet

[Commentary] The Google-Verizon network neutrality proposal is a compromise between the desire of content providers to ensure that all content streams are treated equally and that of access providers to maintain flexibility to manage their networks.

Any action in this area will require compromise. The stakes on all sides are high. For providers, investing in additional capacity is costly, and the flexibility to shape traffic is a prized commodity; for Internet users, having equal ease of access to all content has been perceived as a basic right. The Obama administration has long been committed to the cause of net neutrality, but any government espousal of this principle needs to be carefully tailored. The Federal Communications Commission stands poised to reclassify broadband service providers as common carriers, a category that would subject them to the same sort of regulation that telephone companies are saddled with, even giving the FCC the ability to set rates. The agency's chairman says that the FCC won't use this power -- but this could change in another administration. Such a move would be a serious step backward. A better route would be legislative enactment of something like the Google-Verizon plan, with an emphasis on transparency about decisions that providers are making. Giving the FCC the authority to nudge things in the right direction will be a good first step.

As the Internet evolves, the nature of needed oversight will evolve as well. Establishing a clearly limited power to take action against anti-competitive violations, rather than encumbering this vital sector with detailed and prescriptive regulation, is the sensible approach.

See this response -- Why the FCC can't do its job on broadband access -- written by FCC Commissioner Michael Copps