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Is Net Neutrality Really an Issue?

October 10, 2009

julius_genachowski

The new FCC Chairman, Julius Genachowski, has been at his new job for less than four months now and is wasting no time changing the wireless Internet game. Genachowski's growing support and popularity is well deserved -- he didn't pass any new legislation and carriers are still bowing to his will. Genachowski's position is clear: business's shouldn't restrict what people do on their Internet connections. "The Internet's creators didn't want the network architecture—or any single entity—to pick winners and losers," Genachowski said. "Because it might pick the wrong ones." Despite rolling over on its no-VoIP-on-the-network-with-more-bars policy, AT&T still says no to net neutrality legislation. Ralph de la Vega, AT&T's Mobility CEO, said "there is no need to burden the mobile Internet with onerous new regulations," and that he saw "no abuses" within the industry. Some people think he is right. David Farber, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, also opposes the FCC's proposed net neutrality legislation. While Farber seems to agree with Genachowski's swagger, he also says that there isn't a big enough problem to warrant new rules: "The one or two cases where things that I would say fall into network neutrality have been taken care of easily. The FCC looked at this and said 'You aren't doing things right, so let's look at it.' Having a whole set of regulations for something you don't understand hasn't happened is sort of tricky." Farber isn't very convincing. First of all, there are examples of net neutrality abuse. Several. Comcast was discovered restricting perfectly legal BitTorrent access on its cable Internet lines. Google Voice was blocked from the App Store completely, Skype's app was limited to Wi-Fi by AT&T, and the Vonage app was indicative of something severely hampered by restriction. Google and Verizon have only recently ended their feud (again, thanks to Chairman Genachowski) over the Android. In the past, Verizon has fought against phones that allow people to change wireless networks. Farber was hired by AT&T to write a paper on Genachowski's proposals, but to be fair, he has held this position since at least 2007. Two years ago, Farber said "we should wait until there is a problem before rushing to enact solutions." I guess the million dollar question is: is there a net neutrality problem?

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