[NewsPoster]

US Federal Communications Commission head Tom Wheeler said that there is a specific reason why the regulatory group is taking its time with the net neutrality discussion. Speaking at a meeting on Friday, the chairman said that caution was prudent, and that the agency needs to "make sure that we understand what is going on here." Referring to Verizon, AT&T, and the other major Internet providers, he added that "the big dogs are going to sue regardless of what comes out."

The entire net neutrality debate was launched by an anti-net neutrality lawsuit from Verizon. The existing rules were struck down in a 2-1 decision in mid-January, on the basis that the FCC chose to "classify broadband providers in a manner that exempts them from treatment as common carriers," something the Communications Act prevents the Commission from doing.

While the blocking rules were voided by the court, it chose to allow transparency portions of the Open Internet Order to continue, namely requiring providers to disclose how they manage traffic. The FCC chose to not appeal the decision.

Wheeler noted that there needs to be "sustainable rules, and that starts with making sure that we have addressed the multiplicity of issues that come along and are likely to be raised." Not addressed during the meeting is the possibility of Title II regulation of Internet service providers, which would apply utility-level regulation to the entire industry.

[rumplestiltskin]

Just re-classify the ISPs as common carriers. They are all providing telephone services, right? Ipso facto. Any delay by Wheeler is an attempt to obfuscate the issues by calling them "complicated". The issues are not complicated. One simple re-classification is all it takes; then one rule: "You may not discriminate against Internet traffic; paying for a 'fast lane' is discrimination against everyone else." This doesn't take pages of rules, just one.

[The Vicar]

@rumplestiltskin:

What we're looking at here is "regulatory capture". The big telcos and ISPs now basically own the FCC — you can bet that the majority of FCC upper-level personnel either were employed by the telcos and ISPs before being hired by the FCC or else have been promised nice cushy jobs after they leave the FCC. As a result, the main purpose of the regulatory body is no longer actually regulating, but rather finding creative ways to explain why it does not, in fact, regulate. (The telcos and the ISPs don't want the FCC banished, though, no matter how odd that may seem — if the FCC were to go away, there's a danger that a new body might be established which would actually do its job. So they have to go through a sort of kabuki theater pretense of being reasonable, and hoping the public at large doesn't look too carefully. Otherwise we might notice that Congress gave them billions in tax breaks to build high-speed Internet in the 1990s, which they failed to deliver, then gave them more in the 2000s, which they once again absorbed without actually making any improvements, and demand that Congress tax them to get all that money — which mostly went into executive bonuses — back.)

[Charles Martin]

If you're going to get sued anyway -- as Chairman Wheeler seems to be saying -- what you do is construct the strongest possible legal framework for the best possible option (which is total net neutrality, as rumplestiltskin laid out). It's not that hard anywhere except in Washington DC, apparently.