Utility Regulators Propose Key Tweaks In FCC Net Neutrality Proposal

At its winter meeting in Washington this month, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners sent the Federal Communications Commission a signal that it has its own take on how it should implement network neutrality regulations, which includes applying them to wireless as well as wired broadband.

While the group said it supported such regulations, NARUC had a slightly different take on them. The FCC has proposed codifying its four network openness guidelines and adding a fifth nondiscrimination principle and a sixth on disclosure. NARUC supports the four existing principles and the sixth, as well as the fifth if modified to be an "unreasonable discrimination" principle and applied uniformly across delivery platforms. According to a resolution adopted by NARUC, it believes that unrestricted access to content should be provided without "unreasonable discrimination as to lawful choice of content." The FCC has called for a "reasonable network management" carve out, but has used the term "nondiscriminatory," for its fifth principle, which network operators are concerned could tip the scales toward preventing some network management practices necessary to prevent bottlenecks or sustain business models. But NARUC also made clear what it considers unreasonable discrimination, which includes "blocking VoIP applications, denying access to political content, or implementing technical measures that degrade the performance of peer-to-peer software distributing lawful content."