FCC on brink of broadband transformation

The Federal Communications Commission is about to usher in the most dramatic government intervention in the Internet in two decades -- heralding a liberal shift toward greater oversight of one of the nation’s most important economic engines. The Commission is expected to vote to approve FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s net neutrality plan, which will regulate broadband like a public utility to ensure all Web traffic is treated equally. And it is poised to encourage towns and cities to compete with the dominant telecom companies in providing Internet service to consumers. Taken together, the two moves represent a seismic shift in the relationship between the government and the companies that run the Internet -- and mark the biggest change to communications policy since the 1996 Telecom Act.

“It’s a watershed change,” said Tim Wu, a Columbia Law School professor who’s been deeply involved in the debate and coined the term “net neutrality.” “The chairman is going big, and he’s basically resetting the board on broadband in this country and how the government thinks about it.”

Along with net neutrality and protection of community-run networks, the FCC has been laying the groundwork for its Internet vision in other ways. The FCC approved a new official definition of “broadband,” increasing the threshold to 25 megabits per second for downloads from the previous 4 megabits. The agency called the old standard inadequate to evaluate high-speed Internet service, which today has to support to support a flood of data, voice services and video.