Providers Stress Best Practices For Open Net
April 27, 2010
| 12:12 PM
In an effort to fend off increased FCC oversight, Internet service providers stressed growing industry agreement around best practices for network management in comments due Monday in the commission's "open Internet" proceeding.
The overtures follow efforts by the industry's top lobbyists to present such norms as an alternative to increased FCC oversight during recent meetings with agency commissioners and legal advisers. Verizon Executive Vice President Tom Tauke pointed to existing efforts to improve self governance in meetings with FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn and her legal advisers earlier this month.
He made the same point in a blog post Monday about Verizon's FCC filing. "We continue to work with Google and others to find common ground by focusing on an approach that empowers and protects users and incents industry innovation and investment," he wrote.
Comcast took up the same charge in its comments, raising norms as the first point in a 54-page filing. The company said it sees "consensus that third-party technical groups such as standards setting" bodies might be able to "play an important role in helping the industry understand, refine, and address the various technical issues underlying key policy determinations." Stakeholders who favor tough network neutrality rules, which would require Internet access providers to treat all content the same, have argued that self regulation would not keep access providers in check.
Meanwhile, Google failed to endorse entreaties by peers in the Open Internet Coalition who said the FCC should kick off proceedings to classify broadband as a heavily-regulated telecommunications service rather than a lightly regulated information service. Google said it is "impartial" to where the agency finds legal basis for enforcing open Internet rules, but reiterated support for such regulation.
Google's choice is sure to disappoint some consumer activists, but the company argued this position is consistent with its previous stance in favor of net neutrality and that it has "never been about regulatory rigidity," Google Telecom Counsel Rick Whitt said in a Monday blog post.
Google also devoted considerable attention to refuting an argument that picked up steam among Internet service providers, and appeared again this round: that net neutrality would infringe on the First Amendment rights of access providers. Industry stakeholders, including the National Cable & Telecommunications Associations, reiterated this argument against open Internet rules.
AT&T, meanwhile, surprised no one by stressing its claim that there is no demonstrated need to regulate Internet service providers. "Yup, John Adams was right, facts are indeed stubborn things," the company's top lobbyist Jim Cicconi wrote on the company blog Monday.
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