With the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) expected to conclude this week a comment-seeking exercise relevant to net neutrality rules proposed last fall by Julius Genachowski, top telecommunications and tech policy observers are claiming that the FCC Chairman could be set to receive a major blow. Not only is the momentum in the net neutrality debate increasingly shifting away from proponents, but a number of experts say the White House itself is souring on Genachowski’s plans–a major knock that could signal the death of efforts to advance net neutrality, at least for now.
Historically, net neutrality had been treated as a top policy priority by President Barack Obama, a former classmate and friend of Genachowski. But recently, that has appeared to change.
In October, Susan Crawford, a strong supporter of net neutrality, resigned from the White House. It has since been rumored that economic adviser Larry Summers wanted her gone due to concerns about her facilitating the tagging of Obama advisers as overly radical by virtue of her own agenda.
Numerous Democrats (including 72 in the House) have raised questions about the policy and/or spoken out against it.
In addition, multiple groups with strong connections to Democrats and progressives, including minority and women’s organizations, have begun to raise flags regarding the possible impact of net neutrality rules.
Meanwhile, net neutrality–which supporters have sought to paint as consumer-friendly policy advocated by ordinary people, for ordinary people–has increasingly been tagged as a policy that would primarily help line the pockets of companies like Google, whose employees donated in significant amounts to Obama.
Last week, a federal court rapped the FCC’s knuckles for overstepping its authority in requiring Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to treat all traffic on their networks, including that related to often illegal file-sharing, equally.
Finally, Genachowski was forced to ask Congress for more time to work on a national broadband plan, underlining the FCC’s inability to get work already on its plate done under his tenure.
For months, noise has continually been made that instituting net neutrality would detract from a major public policy objective around which bipartisan consensus already exists: Advancing broadband deployment, a goal that advocates say would have demonstrably positive effects on the economy, jobs, health care and even the environment.
The bottom line appears now to be that net neutrality, chief advocates of it and the overall approach taken by FCC leadership have created a major headache for the White House–one it does not need when trying to finish the job on big ticket items like health care. As such, the White House is now reported to be one step away from throwing in the towel.
Net neutrality advocates, however, haven’t given up fighting yet. Genachowski, for his part, has been described by observers as “doubling down” on his backing of net neutrality. Save The Internet, the hard-left group that some telecommunications policy experts describe as a “de facto front group for Google” and one tech policy observer described as “overtly Marxist,” is running a petition drive to garner hundreds of thousands of signatures in favor of net neutrality to the FCC before the comment-seeking period ends on Thursday.
Other, anti-net neutrality groups are similarly urging opponents of Genachowski’s plans to contact the FCC and provide their views early this week. The FCC is taking comments through a variety of media. Citizens are encouraged to provide their views on net neutrality by submitting comments to the FCC via its website. The FCC is also on Twitter and can be contacted by phone on 1-888-CALL-FCC and by fax on 1-866-418-0232. The FCC has advised that comments should be submitted before the end of the day on Thursday.