House Commerce Committee Asks How/Whether To Regulate Edge Providers

The House Commerce Committee’s Republican leadership wants input on how and whether the Federal Communications Commission should regulate edge providers.

That was one of the questions teed up in the third in a series of white papers the committee is issuing as part of its review and planned rewrite of communications law.

The latest white paper focuses on competition policy and what role the FCC should have. Among the questions for stakeholder comment is one on competition at the network level and the substitutability of various delivery mechanisms.

"Following the Verizon decision, the reach of the Commission to regulate 'edge providers' on the Internet is the subject of some disagreement," the white paper says, then asks. "How should we define competition among edge providers? What role, if any, should the Commission have to regulate edge providers," which it describes as "providers of services that are network agnostic."

The issue the white paper raises is whether edge providers are also potentially subject to that regulation (for example, would paid priority in a search engine's rankings be something that impedes the "virtuous cycle" of unfettered access to content that the FCC is pledging to preserve through new open Internet rules).