FCC NET NEUTRALITY RULES LEAVE WIRELESS PROVIDERS ALONE

After years of wrangling, the FCC has finally decided on what they call “the basic rules of the road to preserve the open Internet as a platform for innovation, investment, competition and free expression”… or net neutrality.

Basically, the new order for net neutrality is similar to what the FCC was floating before. On the positive side, the new net neutrality regulations ban ISPs from blocking content, but they do allow ISPs to manage the network and discriminate between packets within “reason.” That power, though, is mitigated by the legal requirement that ISPs be transparent about their own methodology of packet discrimination.

So far so good, but that’s only true for landlines: the new net neutrality rules completely absolve wireless broadband from any requirement to be “reasonable” in packet discrimination or network management: all they need to do is be transparent and not block content.

This is pretty much what everyone saw coming, and even before the FCC rules on the matter, we knew what they’d likely decide. That said, the absolution of wireless broadband providers from following anything but the bare skeleton of net neutrality provisos is so short sighted as to neuter the entire act. [Geek]