Digital Divide: The Issue of Net Neutrality - Page 4

This statement was heard around the world, and sparked a furious debate. A SBC spokesman told the Washington Post that Whitacre was misinterpreted and his comments only referred to new tiered services.

Several bills have been proposed in Congress in recent years. The Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006 would have made it a violation of the Clayton Antitrust Act for broadband providers to discriminate against any web traffic, refuse to connect to other providers, or block or impair specific (legal) content; the bill would have prohibited the use of admission control to determine network traffic priority. This was approved 20-13 by the House Judiciary committee on May 25, 2006 but was never taken up on the House floor and failed to become law.

A bill called Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006 was introduced in the US House of Representatives, which referenced the principles enunciated by the FCC and authorized fines up to $750,000 for infractions. It was passed 321-101 by the full House of Representatives on June 8, 2006, but its companion measure was filibustered in the Senate.

The Communications, Consumers' Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006 aimed to amend the Communications Act of 1934 and addresses net neutrality by directing the FCC to conduct a study of the abusive business practices within the Internet claimed by the Save the Internet coalition and similar groups. Sent to the full Senate in a 15-7 committee vote and defeated by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation on June 28, 2006.

Just a few weeks after this act failed, The Center for American Progress held a 90 minute debate in Washington, D.C.

Bob Kahn, coinventor of TCP/IP and one of the fathers of the Internet, declared his opposition to net neutrality legislation in a talk at the Computer History Museum in January, 2007. But shortly after that, many bills concerning net neutrality were reintroduced in the new Congressional session and are currently being debated.

Net Neutrality Around the World

The debate spans around the globe, as companies in various countries are experimenting with different practices. The European Union has a framework which permits Internet Service Providers to prioritize packets by application.

The first major debate on Net Neutrality in the UK was held at Westminster in March 2006, an event which representatives from the British Government, the Opposition, telecommunications regulators, industry figures and other experts in the field attended. The conclusion was that net neutrality laws in the UK would be "extreme... unattractive and impractical" and that it was "an answer to problems we don't have, using a philosophy we don't share."

In Japan, the nation's largest phone company, Nippon Telegraph & Telephone, operates a service called Flet's Square that serves video on demand at speeds and levels of service higher than generic Internet traffic. And in the South Korea, VoIP is blocked on high-speed FTTH networks except where the network operator is the service provider.

The world will continue to debate the issue of net neutrality until a high court ruling is issued – one that may change our use of the new media of information to its core.