Why No One's Happy With The FCC's Network Neutrality

On Dec 1, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski sketched out the rules that he said would ensure that broadband providers treat all of the data on their networks equally — an idea known as network neutrality.

But some public interest groups have seen a few more details than Chairman Genachowski announced. They say the proposed rules are net neutrality in name only. "What you have is a lot of consumer groups coming out and looking at this and saying this is a real nightmare," Sascha Meinrath says. Meinrath is with the New America Foundation, a think-tank in Washington, D.C. He says the proposed rules are full of loopholes. For one thing, they would allow broadband providers to offer faster service to some companies — for a price. "These rules could end up allowing companies to pick and choose the services and applications and even content that we are allowed to see online," Meinrath says. "What it does is it gives legal protection for discriminatory behavior." Maybe the biggest loophole, Meinrath says, is that the rules would exempt wireless networks from much of the regulation governing the old-fashioned, wired Internet. The wireless companies argue that they need the flexibility to manage traffic on their networks so that a few users can't hog all the bandwidth. Those companies — particularly AT&T — offered lukewarm support for the proposed FCC rules. But Verizon's Link Hoewing still thinks it's Congress, not the FCC, that should be setting policy for the Internet.