We can all breathe a sigh of relief, as it looks like the current FCC chairman will be strongly backing net neutrality
Julius Genachowski, President Obama’s recent appointment to FCC chairman, has made it very clear that the agency will be supporting net neutrality. Net neutrality, explained here, is basically the principal that all Internet access should be created equal. For example, if net neutrality were not enforced, an ISP would have the ability to throttle bandwidth for certain content, or to charge for access to that specific content.
Genachowski stated: “One thing I would say so that there is no confusion out there is that this FCC will support net neutrality and will enforce any violation of net neutrality principles.” There can’t really be any confusion there. Even though Comcast is taking it to the FCC with a recent lawsuit over penalties it imposed on the cable giant for bandwidth throttling related to its’ consumers BitTorrent usage, the FCC chairman does not appear to be willing to back down.
A bill supporting net neutrality was recently introduced into the House of Representatives, and though Genachowski would not offer an opinion on this bill, he did say that his job is to provide Congress with the proper facts and data that they need to make the right decisions. Not only that, but Genachowski said he would make sure to “speak up” if he doesn’t feel he has enough authority on the net neutrality issue. Sounds like a regular prince to me. This is an extremely important issue and we need the right people in the right positions to make sure net neutrality is enforced.
Source: The Hill
Published: Aug 27, 2009 09:47 pm