FCC Chair Defends Net Neutrality Proposals

FCC chairman Tom Wheeler pushed back against reports that his proposals for net neutrality, introduced to fellow commissioners on Thursday, are watering down the agency’s efforts to preserve an open Internet and allowing for a landscape that will freeze out competition, reports Variety.

Chairman Wheeler

In a blog post, Wheeler said that his proposals “would establish that behavior harmful to consumers or competition by limiting the openness of the Internet will not be permitted.”

Reports on Wednesday of the new net neutrality proposals triggered an outcry from public interest groups, particularly over the notion that the new rules would allow for content companies to pay Internet providers for prioritization, like faster delivery to consumers of web video. That raised the prospect that burgeoning streaming companies like Netflix and Amazon would pay Internet providers for more favorable treatment, with the costs ultimately passed on to consumers.

Michael Copps, a former FCC commissioner who is now special adviser to Common Cause, said that “if true, this proposal is a big step backwards and must be stopped. If the Commission subverts the open Internet by creating a fast lane for 1 percent and slow lanes for the 99 percent, it would be an insult to both citizens and to the promise of the Net.”

But Wheeler, along with FCC officials who briefed reporters on Thursday in a conference call, said that the proposals had been misconstrued.

Key parts of the FCC’s net neutrality rules, passed in 2010, were struck down by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in January, including a provision that prohibits ISPs from blocking content, and another that bar them from “unjust and unreasonable discrimination” in the delivery of traffic to consumers.

The new proposals would retain that no-blocking rule, but the anti-discrimination rule would be abandoned in favor of a new legal standard, one that would measure whether Internet providers were engaging in “commercially reasonable” conduct in the way they treat traffic. A content company could still enter into an agreement with an Internet provider for special access to consumers, but such deals could not be commercially unreasonable.

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