Bad Press Gets in the Way of Net Neutrality

The ‘net neutrality’ talks at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US have broken down after uproar surrounding reports that Google and Verizon were about to announce their own deal to provide faster access for websites that paid for the privilege; something which they both strongly deny.

So why did the talks really break down at the FCC?

Here’s what has happened so far:

• Google and Verizon were privately negotiating for a year to produce a presentation to Congress outlining rules concerning neutrality and what the definition of ‘net neutrality’ is.
• A court limits FCC’s net regulation powers to control data after they tried to sanction Comcast for prioritising some traffic.
• FCC holds private talks with Internet Service Providers, Telecom providers and Internet Corporations looking to find a compromise with the opponents to the net neutrality rules. Their new chairman Julius Genachowski sees the need for rules which prevent ISPs from blocking or slowing access to some URLs that don’t pay for the privilege of better access to consumers. ISPs would of course love this, but if the internet was not free, fair and open to all it would not be the creative and innovative space it is today and the knock on effects would be substantial.
• Reports in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post claimed that Google and Verizon were planning to start a pay service for faster speeds on Verizon’s network. While this deal, when squeezed through the media sensation machine, may sound like a deal made in an underground fortress of evil, the truth is that the deal they may be discussing could in fact improve net neutrality. Google and Verizon may be doing a deal to migrate thousands of Google’s servers to Verizon’s. While Google would prioritise some data for Google users, it could, overall, speed up things for its users and release more bandwidth to the net community.

Google and Verizon denied the anti-neutrality allegations:

“We remain as committed as we always have been to an open internet”, said Google.

“As we said in our earlier FCC filing, our goal is an internet policy framework that ensures openness and accountability, and incorporates specific FCC authority, while maintaining investment and innovation.
“To suggest this is a business arrangement between our companies is entirely incorrect,” David Fish – Verizon.

• FCC talks halted due to the press surrounding the Google/Verizon meetings.
• Reports surface that the Google/Verizon deal is still imminent.

With the FCC’s authority called in to question (quite rightly), and the power of the big internet and ISP players brought into the limelight, everyone’s good intentions to maintain a neutral net may have been dealt a blow thanks to the media furore. Google, in its filing to the FCC on the 26^th April, suggested ways in which they could forge ahead with their ‘net neutrality’ plans, which included supporting FCC’s plan to go down the line of adopting a ‘Title II’ stand point: a reclassification of broadband as a common-carrier service.

They’re on the same side people. Let them get on with it!

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