FCC to Overhaul Regulation of Internet Lines

The Wall Street Journal ^ | May 5, 2010 | Amy Schatz

[abb]

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski has decided to reregulate Internet lines to protect net neutrality, siding with consumer groups and Internet companies worried that Internet providers have too much power.

On Wednesday, Mr. Genachowski's staff began briefing the FCC's commissioners on how they will propose to regulate Internet lines under rules that were written for traditional phone networks. Some of those rules won't be applied to Internet networks, FCC officials say, but others will be used to enforce net neutrality, or regulations that require Internet providers to treat traffic equally and not slow or block websites.

Phone and cable companies opposed the FCC reclassifying regulation of Internet lines under Title 2 of the Communications Act, which was written for traditional phone networks and includes provisions such as rate regulations.

snip

[BikerJoe]

“Some ISPs WERE thinking about somehow favoring access to their “portal” site and inhibiting access to other portal sites...” Do you mean like old time AOL? Before what we know now as “internet” there were providers that let you dial in to their servers, and then you had access to their content, and getting out to other networks was kind of “second rate” access. That didn’t stick. Competition gave direct access to “the net” (not “a portal”) and AOL eventually switched to what we know now.

Yes, AOL is the prime example, but two modern-day examples are MSN and Yahoo, except they aren't also ISPs.

[Taxman]

I’ll be so glad when the Obozo Regime is dead and buried!

[Almondjoy]

They have always invested under those rules why would they stop now? They are going to piss away billions of dollars because they can’t divert bandwidth to who they want?

You guys will really be whining when your liberal cable company puts bandwidth to a conservative website limited to only one person at a time.

Does anyone not think anything through anymore?