It's like Groundhog Day -- without Sonny and Cher.
The federal government has again delayed a highly anticipated vote on rules designed to keep the internet free from meddling by the huge phone and cable companies. The Federal Communications Commission has pushed back its December meeting by one week -- from Dec. 15 to Dec. 21 -- which means the agency doesn't have to publish the meeting agenda until next week. That means the public won't know if new rules will be taken up or what form they will take until next week.
Without informing the public, the federal government simply changed the meeting date on its website.
That means more uncertainty for both the public and the broadband industry over the government's plans to regulate the internet. It's just the latest delay by the government on the issue of network neutrality, the principle that broadband companies should shouldn't block or degrade rival web content, services or applications. The delay also pushes the FCC's meeting to the week of Christmas, typically a slow news week.
“An extra week will help us evaluate potential agenda items for December," Jen Howard, press secretary at the FCC, told Wired.com.
Net neutrality proponents and opponents have been deeply divided over whether the FCC should reclassify broadband to put it back into the same bucket as the phone service - essentially a traditional telecom, rather than treating it as an "information service," to which few rules apply.
Reclassifying broadband as "Title II" would allow the FCC to impose common carrier rules - requiring ISPs to deliver all legitimate traffic and allowing users to use whatever software they like, just as the phone company must complete all calls and let you use whatever phone you like. But opponents say that would be shackling a new industry to an old category of regulations, even if it that's the logical category and the FCC promises to waive off onerous rules, such as price regulation.
"If it takes an extra week for the FCC to do what the public has been telling it to do for several years now, so be it," said Tim Karr, campaign director for Free Press, a nonprofit group that advocates for internet freedom. "The process has run its course and the overwhelming majority of public comments have urged the FCC to create real net neutrality protections."
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