Labour is not fit to govern - Winston Churchill
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FCC meets with telcos, ISPs and big Internet players
THE US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is meeting with telecom companies, some big Internet service providers and other interested parties to see if it can cut a deal on net neutrality before it presses ahead with its regulatory plans.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the commission is hoping to see if it can get a compromise that will give the government authority over Internet lines without changing its approach in ways that some in the industry oppose.
Edward Lazarus, the chief of staff at the FCC, has been meeting behind closed-doors with a bunch of lobbyists representing AT&T, Verizon, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, and a few large Internet services companies such as Google and Skype.
There has been a lot of pressure on the FCC to come up with a consensus deal. Some Washington senators have been rallying behind the telecom companies, which have paid a lot of money into campaign coffers.
However other powerful Internet players such as Google have been pushing for net neutrality rules.
The FCC had tried to assert its right to monitor the net, but a US federal appeals court found in April that the regulator had exceeded its authority in asking cable network provider Comcast to stop throttling Bittorrent peer-to-peer filesharing traffic.
That ruling was based on the FCC's own classification of Internet service providers as "information services", which the FCC had previously adopted during the Bush administration.
The telcos and cable TV outfits are understood to want legislation rather than for the FCC to come up with regulations. Their lobbying power base is in Washington, where they are more likely to get watered down legislation that they can avoid.
If the FCC is successful in regulating the Internet as "communcations services", as it has proposed, the telecoms and other large ISPs will have a much harder time favoring certain traffic and suppressing others.
Members of Congress will begin meetings with representatives from the communications industry on 25 June to discuss topics including the FCC's authority. µ
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This is all about taking money from the consumers pockets with out the consumer knowing he's been pick pocketed. Clear and simple.
is actually pushing for interfaces that'd let it *tap* all television and internet use. SO may have to reverse my prior opinion on the FCC and the press about them regulating ISPs as common carriers -- without then being for the carriers -- if it turns out that, as usual, gov't and industry are conspiring. Maybe there are no "good guys" left.
Back in the Bad Old Days when Compuserve and AOL sold you a "walled garden" with internet access bolted on as an afterthought; maybe back then, they were "information services". That was what, 1995?
Its really come to a pretty pass when the FCC are looking like the *good* guys.