Network Neutrality: S215 in the Senate, 110th Congress
While the issue of “network neutrality” has been addressed in several bills before the House and Senate, most of them have died without passing. The current bill in the Senate, 110th Congress, is S 215, “The Internet Freedom Preservation Act,” govtrack page here. A subtitle of the bill is “A bill to amend the Communications Act of 1934 to ensure net neutrality.” The bill was introduced in early 2007 and does not seem to have made a lot of progress yet.
The text of the bill is here.
The executive Congressional Research Service summary of the bill is here.
There are two sections: (I) Short Title (II) Internet Neutrality, the second section having a delivery report.
The Internet Neutrality provision would require public communications carriers to offer the same services and capacities to the general public that they would to preferred customers. But it specifically allows pricing structures that consider amount of use, as well as other reasonable modifications, like parental controls. But telecommunications providers may not require consumers to purchase services or extra capacity that they don’t want.
The earlier House bill 5252 in the 109th Congress had included much more detail and had provided an “Internet Consumer Bill of Rights”. It had passed the House but not become law. It essentially required ISPs to conform with the “spirit” of network neutrality. The Senate bill S 2686 (introduced, never passed) in the 109th had, besides some specific provisions regarding child pornography, had given the FCC certain authority to monitor and report on carrier conduct with respect to network neutrality.
The Consumers Union (Jan. 14 2008 on this blog of mine;, look at the link to the CU PDF file from 2006) seems to prefer the newer bill as simpler and cleaner. The bills in the 109th Congress, according to CU, left a lot of wiggle room for CEO’s to set up tiered pricing structures that could eventually eliminate some consumers or speakers.
Again, none of this is completely clear yet to me, even in the new bill. What needs to happen is an examination of the economics of the telecommunications business and what makes various kinds of offerings to consumers profitable.
See also blog entry Feb. 20 on this blog for H.R. 5353.
July 3rd, 2010 at 1:03 pm
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