Time to settle net neutrality debate

[Commentary] Job one for the new Federal Communications Commission under President Obama should be to define and make permanent Network Neutrality. The FCC should establish clear guidelines for what constitutes acceptable network management. It's in the best interest of service providers, Internet companies and consumers to get this done. If net neutrality seems like so much Washington policy wonkishness, well, it's not. As Internet traffic explodes, telecommunications companies like Comcast and AT&T have argued that they're spending vast sums of money on new infrastructure that companies like Google are eating up with their search and video traffic. The service providers would like to charge some companies more to carry certain types of content, or to restrict the amount or type of content to end users to help manage that flow of traffic. The problem is that this punishes consumers, who face either lower quality service, or higher costs. Telecom companies could essentially set up a toll service, and those costs will get passed on to consumers either directly, in the form of higher broadband costs, or indirectly by companies that are forced to pay more to have their content carried across the Internet. This is bad for innovation and bad for our wallets.