Senator Wyden introduces bill to regulate data caps

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced legislation to regulate the use of broadband data caps. "Data caps create challenges for consumers and run the risk of undermining innovation in the digital economy if they are imposed bluntly and not designed to truly manage network congestion," said Sen Wyden.

He hopes to address three issues with his proposal:

• First, he wants to increase the amount and accuracy of information provided to consumers. His bill empowers the Federal Communications Commission to regulate ISPs' methods for measuring bandwidth usage with an eye to improving their accuracy. And it requires ISPs to provide their customers with realtime tools for tracking their usage and comparing them with the ISP's established caps.
• Second, the bill requires that any data caps employed by ISPs function to "reasonably limit network congestion without unnecessarily restricting Internet use." According to a statement released with the legislation, "some data caps are so blunt that they may work to discourage Internet use even when doing so has no bearing on network congestion."
• The most ambitious part of the legislation is a kind of network neutrality rule. It requires that any data cap (which is defined to include metering schemes) not be used to "provide preferential treatment of data that is based on the source or content of the data." That would ban a practice that is frequently mentioned by advocates of network neutrality regulation: the creation of a paid "fast lane."