Network Neutrality Adopted By FCC

by Christopher Bowen, Diehard GameFAN

A contentious set of rules – commonly known as Network Neutrality – has officially been passed by the Federal Communications Commission in a five person vote along party lines.

The rules prohibit the blocking of lawful content on fixed broadband networks (I.E.: what you have in your home), and lawful websites on wireless networks (I.E.: what you get on cell phones), though wireless networks are otherwise exempt from these rules, with the stated reasoning being a lack of capability on those networks. There is also a prohibition from outright blocking services that compete with those of a carrier (meaning, Comcast can’t block streaming video while playing up their own services). The bill also prevents broadband providers from throttling traffic unreasonably, though it does allow “reasonable” network management. Provisions in the bill state that companies must be transparent in their dealings.

However, the bill – which was written in tandem by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and telecommunications providers Comcast and Verizon – also paves the way for a tiered internet system, where companies can pay a premium to have their content given a priority. For the sake of clarity, imagine you’re on a pure network (for the sake of argument), where everything you download – pages, files, services like online gaming, etc. – downloads at 300MB/sec under normal, non-stressed conditions. Now, imagine that network at 100% capacity, with everything downloading at 50MB/sec. A company can pay to have their content prioritized so that it gets through at all costs. That means, using this pure example, that Microsoft could pay to have Xbox LIVE data streamed at peak rates, keeping it at 300MB/sec, at the expense of Sony, who would either have to pay up or risk their customers getting everything at possibly 20MB/sec.

Neither side is happy with the bill. Activists in favour of pure network neutrality are pledging to challenge the bill in court on constitutional grounds revolving around the first amendment with support from Minnesota Senator Al Franken, while Republican lawmakers are already promising to take the FCC to task once the GOP takes control of the House of Representatives in January. On the actual vote, the three Democrats voted for the bill, while both Republicans voted against it, with Robert McDowell penning a harsh critique in the Wall Street Journal over it.

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Furthermore, this will not stimulate any kind of innovation or investment into broadband whatsoever by the telecoms who stated that any kind of network neutrality legislation whatsoever would have removed the incentive to invest and cost Americans jobs.

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In the end, I see the internet going the way that television is, with customers having virtually no choice as to what they can receive, and under the same selective monopoly – usually by the same company – that they’re under with broadband. I’ll use two local examples. Cablevision customers recently lost access to all FOX programming because of a dispute over money between the two companies. As for me, I did exercise the one choice I have, and dropped Comcast’s TV package for DirecTV, which affects me today due to the fact that they’ve dropped G4 because of money. To put this in a gaming perspective, imagine if Microsoft entered into an exclusive peering deal with your ISP that allowed their Live traffic – and only that traffic – to be put into the proverbial fast-lane. If you’re a PlayStation gamer, you just got screwed, and you have no recourse except to do your gaming on the 360 if you want any kind of speed.

Due to this legislation, that’s the future we’re looking at. We might not have Netflix streaming completely blocked, but it can be slow-laned to irrelevance by companies who have a financial incentive to do so, and no reason to do otherwise because their customers have nowhere else to go. Read this critique

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