New Congress, AT&T Revive the Net Neutrality Issue

Published: January 22, 2007

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The merger of AT&T (formerly regional telecom company SBC Communications and AT&T) with BellSouth (another regional former Bell company) at the end of December revived the debate over "net neutrality," which seeks to keep service levels on the Internet the same for all users and to prevent telcos and other service providers from creating a multi-tier network with different levels of service and pricing. The new Democratically controlled Congress in the United States has also reached across the aisle in the Senate to one Republican to propose an amendment to telecom law that deals with net neutrality.

The $85 billion AT&T-BellSouth merger had passed all regulatory hurdles but one--approval by the Federal Communications Commission. Once FCC commissioner Robert McDowell, a Republican who has lobbied on behalf of telecom companies in the past, recused himself from the vote, the FCC was deadlocked at two Republicans for the merger and two Democrats against it unless the merged and enlarged AT&T made concessions on net neutrality and caps on the rates that AT&T can charge for high-speed, high-bandwidth data lines.

Apparently not satisfied that the concessions that AT&T made would be adopted by other telecom companies, Democratic Senators Byron Dorgan, John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, Hillary Clinton, Patrick Leahy and Barak Obama and Republican Senator Olympia Snowe that would amend the Telecom Act of 1934 to ensure net neutrality.

Called the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, this amendment would not allow any Internet service provider or telecom company to "block, interfere with, discriminate against, impair, or degrade the ability of any person to use a broadband service to access, use, send, post, receive or offer any lawful content, application or service made available via the Internet." The bill would also require service providers to give information about the speed and quality of the service they provide to users--presumably in real-time, so they can verify that degraded performance is not happening--and does not allow service providers to impose fees based on the type of content, applications, or services running on the Internet and accessed by end users. So, if you want TV service over the Internet, a phone company cannot ask you to pay for broadband--but it has to allow you to do either or both of you want to.

It will be interesting to see what the House of Representatives does on this front now, and whether such a net neutrality law can make it to President Bush's desk. And if not his desk, then perhaps someone else's.

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