The war over Net neutrality is entering a new phase, with an announcement Thursday by the Federal Communications Commission that it is discontinuing efforts to reach a deal with large web and telecommunications companies on a plan to send to Congress. The breakdown comes just as reports broke Thursday that Google, a leader in advocating an open Internet, had reached an agreement with Verizon about ways to offer better service to some of its customers.
This ability to favor some content and applications over others, possibly divided by those who can pay for better access and those who cannot, is the core battle in Net neutrality. To date, the Internet experience has been that all sites have equal access to bandwidth, even if the speed of a site’s servers and other factors differ.
‘Tighter Boundaries’ in FCC Talks
According to The Washington Post, the now-discontinued FCC/industry negotiations had led to agreement on a variety of issues, including what the paper described as “tighter boundaries for managing web traffic than those agreed upon by Verizon and Google, according to sources familiar with the meetings.”
In the wake of a storm of criticism that descended on both Google and Verizon, the FCC is faced with having to move as quickly as it can, or face a de facto industry arrangement. Some industry observers are saying that Google, which has been a champion of Net neutrality and an open Internet, only intends to agree to service-level agreements on content that requires quick delivery, such as real-time medical files and communications, and leave all else to voluntary arrangements.
One question is whether the FCC will now attempt to regulate Net neutrality with its rules, or if that fight will be in Congress — or both. In mid-June, the agency released what Chairman Julius Genachowski described as a “Third…