WASHINGTON — Just hours after the head of the Federal Communications Commission said he would push ahead with rules to prohibit broadband providers from blocking or discriminating against Internet traffic flowing over their networks, the battle lines are being drawn.
The proposal has won grudging support from several big phone and cable companies, including AT&T Inc. and Comcast Corp., and at least a few public-interest groups. It faces withering criticism from Republicans in Congress and at the FCC, who are calling it an effort to regulate the Internet.
But the fate of the “network neutrality” plan crafted by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski may ultimately lie with his two fellow Democrats on the five-member commission. For now, it’s unclear how they will vote when the agency considers the proposal later this month.
“Today is the beginning of an important discussion, and not the end,” one of those two commissioners, Michael Copps, said in a statement Wednesday. “At issue is who will control access to the online experiences of consumers — consumers themselves or Big Phone and Big Cable gatekeepers.”
Genachowski’s widely anticipated plan, which he laid out in a speech Wednesday, is the product of months of negotiations to find middle ground in a policy dispute that pitted phone and cable giants against a number of Internet companies and public-interest groups. Net-neutrality rules were one of the Obama administration’s top campaign pledges to the technology industry and have been among Genachowski’s priorities since he took over the FCC more than a year ago.
Many big Internet companies, such as search leader Google Inc. and calling service Skype, insist regulations are needed to ensure that broadband companies can’t use their control over Internet connections to dictate where consumers can go and what they can do online. They are particularly concerned that without strong net-neutrality protections, phone and cable companies could slow or block online phone calls, Web video and other Internet services that compete with their core businesses. Internet companies and public-interest groups also want regulations to prevent broadband providers from favoring their own online traffic or traffic from business partners that can pay to take priority over other online services.
But Genachowski has fought an uphill battle against phone and cable giants, which insist they need flexibility to manage network traffic so that high-bandwidth applications — such as online video — don’t hog capacity and slow their networks. The communications companies also argue that after spending billions to upgrade their lines for broadband, they need to be able earn a healthy return by offering premium high-speed services. They warn that burdensome regulations would discourage them from continuing to invest in their systems.
