Net neutrality regulations are one of the upcoming plans that are in the pipeline from the Obama administration now. The administration is now trying to impose this even when it is one of the controversial issues in the United States. There were a total of six GOP senators who came up with the legislation that will limit the role of Federal Communications Commission’s ability to regulate broadband providers. The recent effort of FCC alarms the whole country as the takeover will cause serious unnecessary and antiquated regulation to be imposed on the internet.
The FCC Act:
The bill is termed as Freedom for Consumer Choice Act or the FCC ACT. The bill does not bring an end to the FCC’s power over broadband projects but it tends to narrow the scope in order to make the Act lie within the bounds of rules and regulations. There is a section that defines the authority of FCC to introduce unfair methods of competition and levy requirements on the industry only in case the market does not have sufficient competition between the service providers.
The bill is the response to the previous attempt of FCC that has kind of slapped net neutrality and the Act was not authorized by congress. In addition, the FCC claims are mostly flatly inconsistent with the laws and legislations. After the court’s ruling on this matter, FCC came up with plans in order to reclassify broadband services as a telecommunication service and effectively importing a subset of the regulations designed for the analog phone system to the internet.
Market opinion:
There are even people who are in favor of the net neutrality and they claim that there should be regulations and laws on the internet and broadband providers that will not let them restrict content neither will they be able to prioritize one type of traffic on another. The service providers as well as free market groups on the other hand come up with the justification that this will cut off further innovation in the internet market and it will give same preference to any content that has a proper justification as well as that is spam in nature. Once both of these will be of the same priority, there will be no security on the internet.
There were multiple views about the bill from all the numerous directions. The probable reason was that most people consider the FCC acts to be horrible that will let the internet be no safer place and there will be no real time regulation in the internet. The act needs to be reviewed in order to create some consumer interests and that will certainly help posing new regulations into the arena.
New regulations will only be implemented in case FCC can make a demonstration that the current market does not support healthy competition or is not providing the consumer with insufficient welfare opportunities. In case the imposition has been made without prior investigation or proof, the broadband company has an option to file a lawsuit in its defense.
Net neutrality has gained a number of different comments from all around the US but this certainly does not mean that FCC will be successful in getting the regulations made.
