The Federal Communications Commission convened a public hearing at Stanford University on Thursday to examine whether broadband Internet service providers (ISPs) should be allowed to restrict access to certain Internet software applications.
Speaking at a public seven-hour hearing at Dinkelspiel Auditorium, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said that the commission would decide whether certain ISPs are honest with their customers about how they manage their networks and if they deliver on the speeds that they advertise. Martin said the commission should scrutinize these two factors as it decides what constitutes “reasonable network management practices” by ISPs such as Comcast.
The hearing on the issue of “net neutrality,” the notion that all Internet traffic should be unrestricted, comes after a similar hearing held at Harvard earlier this year at which Comcast reputedly paid seat-warmers to take up space and prevent members of the public from voicing their concerns.
“Application designers need to understand what will and what will not work on the network, and consumers must be fully informed about the exact nature of the service they are purchasing,” Martin said. “Particularly as broadband providers are trying to provide tiers of service, it’s critical to make sure that we are understanding that the broadband network operators are able to deliver the speeds and service that they are selling.”
Democratic FCC Commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps called for the agency to utilize its power to prevent Comcast and other ISPs from unfairly discriminating against some software traffic, such as BitTorrent, a popular peer-to-peer file sharing program.
“Consumers have come to expect and will continue to demand the open and neutral character that has always been the hallmark of the Internet,” Adelstein said to an audience of about 400 people. “The movement for Internet freedom is tapping the same American spirit that fueled the movement against media consolidation.”
Copps cited the desperate need for greater competition in the broadband marketplace. He said that effective competition would provide incentives for ISPs to maintain neutral and open networks and added that the FCC’s own statistics show that telephone and cable operators control over 90 percent of the residential market.
“[The] wonderful, open and dynamic Internet - perhaps the most liberating technology since the printing press, if not even greater than that - is, in fact, under threat,” Copps said. “We will keep it open and free only by acting to make it happen. Its future is not on autopilot and, indeed, powerful interests would bring it under their control for their own purposes; which may not be your purposes.”
On the other hand, Republican Commissioners Deborah Tate and Robert McDowell warned against additional and costly government regulations. They said that while the anti-competitive allegations should be taken seriously, network issues were better settled by engineers in the private marketplace rather than by the government.
“The point is that the Internet has flourished by operating under the principle that engineers should solve engineering problems, not politicians and bureaucrats,” McDowell said.