Report: Wheeler to alter net neutrality proposal

The Federal Communications Commission this week is expected to alter its stance on net neutrality, with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler bowing to pressure in preventing Internet service providers from hobbling network speeds in connection to data traffic.
The Wall Street Journal over the weekend reported that Wheeler planned to circulate modifications to his previous plans that seemed to take a light regulatory approach to enforcing net neutrality rules, noting that the FCC would prevent harmful conduct if “it were found to not be ‘commercially reasonable.’” Critics did not seem convinced of the FCC’s stance on the subject, with a number of high-tech firms filing comments citing the need for the FCC to take a firm stance on net neutrality.
The report claimed Wheeler could roll out revisions to his initial order as early as today.
The FCC was forced to take a step back from its previous stance on net neutrality following a federal appeals court decision in January favoring Verizon Communications in a fight with the FCC over net neutrality that stated the government agency needed to re-craft its rules on the matter. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said that it made the ruling because the FCC had failed to classify Internet service providers as “common carriers.” The previous net neutrality rules applied to common carriers and were meant to insure that a service provider could not limit or control the content available to its subscribers.
Following the court decision in January, Comcast struck a deal with Netflix over the handling of the content provider’s streaming services. Financial details of the agreement were not released, but some have argued that it amounted to Netflix having to pay Comcast to stop strangling its streaming video service.
After the agreement, Netflix noted that the speed at which its customers were able to view content had increased significantly over Comcast’s network.
FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn came out late last week stating that the FCC needed to take a firm stance on the matter, noting in a blog post that the initial order circulated by Wheeler did not go far enough to insure net neutrality regulations.
Clyburn also referenced her previous desire to enforce net neutrality regulation across both wired and wireless access methods, something that could be a more delicate task seeing that wireless carriers are typically hampered by the amount of spectrum they control in managing network capacity. The FCC has so far refrained from strictly enforcing net neutrality regulations against wireless carriers, many of which have data plans that call for consumers to have their network speeds reduced once they hit the limit of their data bucket or are found to be “abusing” network privileges.
AT&T recently launched a sponsored data offer that allows content providers to pay for consumers to access their content over the carrier’s wireless network.
600 MHz incentive auction rules coming
The FCC is expected to meet on May 15 to discuss Wheeler’s net neutrality plans as well as filling out more rules for the handling of the 600 MHz incentive auction that is currently scheduled for mid-2015. Wheeler last month hinted that rulemaking for the auction could limit the bidding opportunities of carriers already engorged with sub-1 GHz spectrum holdings.
In a blog post, Wheeler touted the game-changing possibilities embedded in the scheduled auction for both the broadcast industry, which will be giving up spectrum for cash, and for the wireless telecommunications space. Those wireless telecom benefits included rural markets where the propagation characteristics of the 600 MHz spectrum band could ease wireless broadband deployments, as well as urban markets where the spectrum is more efficient in penetrating buildings.
Wheeler touched on the agency’s current thinking in terms of how it may craft spectrum auction rules in order to benefit carriers that do not currently own significant chunks of sub-1 GHz spectrum licenses.
“A legacy of earlier spectrum assignments … is that two national carriers control the vast majority of low-band spectrum. As a result, rural consumers are denied the competition and choice that would be available if more wireless competitors also had access to low-band spectrum,” Wheeler wrote. “While many factors go into determining the quality of wireless service, access to a sufficient amount of low-band spectrum is a threshold requirement for extending and improving service in both rural and urban areas.”
AT&T and Verizon Communications have been most vocal in critiquing such a proposal as both are expected to be impacted by such a move.
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