How the FCC’s ban on prioritization puts patients at risk

[Commentary] Telemedicine could transform the medical experience we are accustomed to today. While it holds great promise, the Federal Communications Commission’s recent Open Internet rules threaten to bring this healthcare revolution to a stuttering halt. Certain medical practices require prioritization, in one form or another, for timely data and optimal real-time performance. Delaying or dropping telemedicine packets – whose contents contain important health information for the sole sake of “packet equality” is a misguided choice detrimental to patient health. What the FCC’s Open Internet rules do not acknowledge is that different services absolutely have different demands of the network. While we may agree to equal treatment of data in principle, enacting wholesale bans on prioritization and resource-reservation network technology is a bad idea. It denies the multiple service requirements a network was designed to accommodate and discriminates against emerging services that need prioritization in order to work. Ruining the quality of experience of one service type for the sake of equality with a differing service type (with dissimilar network demands) is not a true solution.

Telemedicine has been a long-awaited move towards customer-centered healthcare that has reached a boiling point. The recent Open Internet rules effectively turn off the heat, dictating that the coming feast be prepared in a tepid pool of inaction, all in the name of equality. The FCC should not be a gatekeeper to the future of telemedicine. We need Congress to act, not only to clarify the role of the FCC, but to provide a much-needed modernized legal framework for Internet innovation.

[Roslyn Layton studies Internet economics at the Center for Communication, Media, and Information Technologies at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, Denmark]