PROVIDENCE – Telecommunications companies and other Internet providers that serve Rhode Island are weighing how they will be impacted by new Federal Communications Commission regulations requiring them to treat all online content providers equally.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski on Sept. 21 announced that his agency plans to put in place “net neutrality” rules that will bar telephone, cable and wireless Internet service providers (ISPs) from favoring different companies by delivering their content faster than that of other firms.
The rules would allow companies to engage in “reasonable” network management, Genachowski said, and to block illegal content.
President Barack Obama had promised to support the regulations during his campaign last year. The proposal is strongly opposed by major telecom companies such as Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc. and backed by content providers including Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp.
“We could not be more pleased,” Vinton Cerf, a vice president at Google, wrote in a posting on the company’s public policy blog.
An FCC official told Bloomberg News the issue will now go through a formal rule-making process that is expected to conclude sometime in the first part of 2010. The regulations are likely to pass, Bloomberg said.
The stakes are high for companies that will be impacted in Rhode Island and elsewhere.
AT&T and Verizon say that although they support some of the proposed rules, they should not be applied to wireless networks – as opposed to wireline, or fixed, networks – because wireless networks are more likely to experience demand fluctuations, CNET News reported.
The rules would also give consumers the right to use any equipment on a wireless network, which would prevent providers from making exclusive deals with handset manufacturers like the one that limits Apple Inc.’s iPhone to AT&T’s network, according to Bloomberg.
Cox Communications Inc., one of Rhode Island’s major Internet providers, is testing a system that prioritizes what it considers higher-priority Internet traffic during times of network congestion. As the trade publication Multichannel News noted, it is unclear whether Cox’s new system would be deemed “reasonable” network management or unlawful interference with traffic by the FCC.
Levi C. Maaia, vice president of the independent East Bay cable provider Full Channel Inc., told Providence Business News he is “pleased” that Genachowski is supporting net neutrality, but said the FCC chairman had failed to address another issue of concern to cable providers: content neutrality.
“If Internet service providers are to discontinue discrimination based on the source of data traffic, then so too should content providers end such practices,” Maaia said in an e-mail. “Under content neutrality media giants such as Disney, Google, Yahoo, etc. would no longer be allowed to demand payment from ISPs for access to their content.”
As an example, Maaia pointed to Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN 360 service, which is only available to Internet providers which pay Disney a fee based on their total number of subscribers.
“Without content neutrality as part of the deal we will see the a-la-carte merit-based model of the Internet disappear in favor of a model where content is forced as a package on consumers by media giants,” Maaia said. “This will result in skyrocketing costs for Internet access and a crippled and ‘closed Internet.’ ”
Another local company, Towerstream, the Middletown-based provider of fixed WiMax service, is not worried about the new regulations, said Jeff Thompson, the company’s CEO.
“We’ve already designed net neutrality into our network,” Thompson told CNET in August. “Part of the standard for WiMax defines quality of service. So we can schedule the packets to guarantee a level of service for our customers. And we don’t have to discriminate against any traffic.”
