One of the telecommunications companies’ major arguments against net neutrality legislation has been the supposed haziness of the term itself. In a debate facilitated by the Wall Street Journal, industry lobbyist Michael McCurry asked “what exactly is the definition of ‘network neutrality’ anyhow?” This sentiment has been expressed throughout the life of the discussion. “How can we possibly legislate if we cannot clearly define the concept,” has been a mantra of the telcos, and rightfully so.
Now it seems as though the industry has answered its own question and in the process, possibly aided their pro-neutrality opponents. By expressing in writing, under contractual agreement, exactly how they define and plan to uphold net neutrality (for two years), AT&T and BellSouth have seemingly removed a leg of their own arguement against legislation.
In advance of that brewing battle in Congress, the very words to which AT&T agreed negated one argument that telephone and cable companies had used against their Internet opponents last year — that net neutrality is so vague, it could not even be defined.
“This language is crafted as a practical implementation of neutrality,” Columbia University law Professor Tim Wu wrote about AT&T’s concessions. “As the first working rule, it may serve as a model and an experiment for what follows.”
Read Full Article from Tom Abate, San Francisco Chronicle, 1-7-07
From the same article, a decent overview of the net neutrality issue:
Most people may find it difficult to understand what all the fuss, is about given that net neutrality raises issues as big and complex as, well, the Internet.
Blair Levin, ex-aide to former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt and now a telecommunications adviser for the Stifel Nicolaus investment bank, offered this primer:
Until recently, the telephone and cable companies that own the two wires leading to the American home also pretty much controlled what services were delivered over those wires. They essentially controlled both the transport layer — the wire — and the service layer that traveled over the wires, be it a television show or a telephone call.
But broadband — or high-speed — Internet changed this. Now the same wire — whether the phone company’s DSL or the cable company’s modem — can carry any service from e-mail to a movie from any vendor in the world.
The crux of the debate is that wire owners want a free hand to charge Internet companies a bit extra for speedier service. Creating preferential delivery deals would make the new broadband world more like the old world, in which the wire-owner had greater control over what flowed through its lines, Levin said. Conversely, net neutrality advocates fear this pricing power will allow phone and cable companies to pick which Internet services get the fastest and best delivery.
