WASHINGTON-With a small improvement in equipment, unlicensed wireless spectrum could solve the network-neutrality debate by providing proponents with enough bandwidth to compete with cable and digital subscriber lines, said Yochai Benkler, a professor at Yale University and author of “The Wealth of Networks: How U.S. Internet Policies are Undermining Both Freedom & Growth.” Benkler made the observation at a discussion sponsored last week by the Center for American Progress.
“Open wireless networks do provide a path where we could provide our own services,” said Benkler. “Just a little improvement in unlicensed devices could give us a viable last mile.”
Benkler is skeptical that Congress will pass network neutrality legislation, but he said the efforts of the cable and telecommunications companies to discriminate against consumers and smaller content providers should be thwarted.
Network neutrality has emerged as the key battleground for telecommunications-reform legislation. Proponents believe that a two-tiered Internet would stifle innovation and opponents believe they need to operate their networks as they see fit.
In May, the House of Representatives advanced two opposite views of network neutrality. The House Commerce Committee bill gives the Federal Communications Commission authority to adjudicate complaints that the FCC’ broadband policy had been violated, but does not allow the agency to turn that policy into a regulation. The House Judiciary Committee passed legislation changing antitrust laws to specifically prohibit discriminatory behavior in the telecom sector and to require that network operators treat all content providers offering the same type of content equally.
Action on the Senate side of the Capitol is moving more slowly, but the network-neutrality debate has heated up there too with two competing visions. The first bill, dubbed the Communications Act of 2006, would only have the FCC study the network-neutrality issue. A staff draft revision by the Democrats would put in place network-neutrality principles.
A more moderate view emerged from the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, which last week issued a paper calling for a third way on network neutrality that would attempt a compromise between those that do not want any controls on network operators and those that want strict anti-discrimination controls imposed on pipe owners.
“What is missing from this debate is a third-way solution-one that allows broadband providers to provide and charge for enhanced network services while providing some form of regulatory oversight to address the plausible risk that the current broadband providers (i.e. the cable and telephone companies) will abuse their market power in this market, while also assuring that a reasonably sized, open and unmanaged Internet is available,” wrote Robert Atkinson and Philip Weiser in “A `Third Way’ on Network Neutrality.”
