Net Neutrality Order Appears Headed for April 25 FCC Vote
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel appears likely to circulate proposed net neutrality rules for a vote at the commission’s April 25 meeting, which would mean releasing a draft Thursday under current commission policy. A prime motivation for moving now would be avoiding having the order overturned by a Congressional Review Act vote, should Republicans take the House and Senate in the November elections, said industry officials supporting and opposing new rules.
Numerous industry officials said they're hearing consistently that a net neutrality order is expected at the agency’s April meeting. That has been the rumor for several weeks, one said. An industry attorney told us that at this point he would be surprised if the net neutrality vote weren't April 25.
"The chatter surrounding a vote on a Title II order at the April meeting makes sense for several reasons, including that the record is full and the issue is ripe, if not overripe -- yet again,” Cooley’s Robert McDowell wrote in an email. Numerous industry officials said they have consistently heard that a net neutrality order is expected at the agency’s April meeting.
The vote would come as the debate intensifies on how network slicing will be treated under the rules. Slicing is a technology that creates multiple virtual networks on top of a shared network, which is now possible as 5G advances.
Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at New America, said he supported a filing led by Barbara van Schewick, director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society (see 2403130057), opposing an exception for slicing from paid prioritization rules. Her views are “exactly the same as the entire Open Internet Coalition, which includes dozens of leading nonprofits and many edge provider companies as well,” Calabrese said. Network slicing is important for “enterprise services, such as factory automation, telematics for auto safety, and IoT networks,” he said. He said he's concerned that the rules not create "a loophole that allows an exception from the bright line rule against paid prioritization for so-called mobile network ‘slices’ that are simply fast lanes for premium versions of applications that run over the regular internet, such as video conferencing and gaming.”
Richard Bennett, founder of the High Tech Forum, wrote in a blog post that Van Schewick is “without question the most dedicated advocate for strict net neutrality regulations the world has ever seen,” and her recommendations would “effectively erase” any exception for non-broadband internet access services under the rules, he said. Her proposal would treat “all broadband service as access to the Internet even when it has nothing to do with the Internet,” Bennett said: Her "comments are noteworthy because of the breadth of their paranoia, blindness to the engineering realities of today’s Internet, profound ignorance of 5G, and failure to even mention the concept of network quality of service.”
AT&T also challenged van Schweick's views. “These advocates misunderstand which entities control access by mobile broadband users to 5G network slices and misconstrue the nature of the license rights that mobile operators possess,” it said in a filing posted last week in docket 23-320. “Without any factual basis, they also essentially ignore the extensive benefits slicing offers to end users by using scarce network resources more efficiently and enabling new capabilities and applications on mobile networks.”
Net neutrality opponents often “seek to hide loopholes with hyperbole and misdirection,” emailed Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld. No one is talking about blocking slicing, he argued. “What we have asked the commission to do is to clarify that you cannot simply circumvent net neutrality rules by shouting ‘network slicing!’"