Fight brewing in Congress over net neutrality

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A handful of large broadband providers control the pipes into most U.S. residents’ homes, and they now want to control the content flowing over those pipes, consumer advocates complain. And how much control large broadband providers such as AT&T, BellSouth and Comcast  have over the Web sites and applications customers use on their broadband networks is at the heart of a debate heating up in the U.S. Congress this year.

A concept called net neutrality -- that Internet users should have the right to go to any legal Web site, run any legal Web application and attach any legal device to the network -- has been around for years. Former U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Michael Powell called for four Internet freedoms enveloping net neutrality in February 2004.

But only in last half year have backers of net neutrality -- including Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft -- pushed to have those ideas written into law. Since late last year, Congress has looked at ways to update its 10-year-old telecommunications regulations to address broadband and related services such as VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol).

Some Republicans in Congress have expressed doubts about a net neutrality law, saying it would be the first step toward regulating the wide, open Internet. Such a law could also discourage broadband providers from improving their networks, said Representative Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican.

“I’m … very concerned that we not put a chill on the investment that’s required for the rollout of broadband services,” he said at a recent net neutrality forum.

As part of telecom reform, AT&T and Verizon Communications are pushing a stripped-down video franchising process that would allow them to quickly expand their broadband video services in competition with cable television providers. AT&T and BellSouth have proposed a high-speed broadband video network separate from the public Internet, guaranteeing its own video service a level of quality that’s not available on the regular Internet.

Net neutrality backers object, saying broadband providers want to move away from the open Internet and create an Internet fast lane for their own services, or for affiliated services, and a slow lane for everyone else. VOIP provider Vonage Holdings already points to a handful of cases where broadband providers have tried to block or slow its service.

Small, innovative companies won’t be able to compete in a pay-for-performance Internet, said Mark Cooper, research director of the Consumer Federation of America.

The model of the Internet, until now, has been for providers to charge for access and for innovative companies to provide products people want to use on the Internet, Cooper said at a recent net neutrality forum. “You haven’t innovated anything that you want to charge these customers for,” Cooper told Verizon and BellSouth executives.

Cooper and some net neutrality advocates say tiered service is acceptable -- broadband providers should be able to charge more for 10 gigabit service than 1 gigabit service. But if customers pay for 10 gigabit service, they should be able to run whatever Web applications and services they want, he argued.

But some broadband providers say they should have the right to forge new business relationships with Web businesses, including the power to charge Web sites extra for better performance. In their vision of the future Internet, one search engine or news site would pay a broadband provider more so that Web surfers had faster access than to competing sites.