The FCC, Comcast, and Net Neutrality

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Competition for Cable Fare

But at the Feb. 25 hearing, critics argued it's unacceptable to single out a given type of traffic—particularly one that is used mostly to deliver movies and other video, in direct competition with Comcast's cable offerings. Experts pointed out that other carriers haven't taken this approach. Comcast critics say the company should be more focused on building additional bandwidth to satisfy customer demand than on finding ways to throttle some of their activities. "Comcast is trying to generalize and say this is a common practice," says Gilles BianRosa, CEO of Vuze, a video site that filed a petition with the FCC last November claiming the throttling practices were hurting its business. "The funny thing is that the other Internet service providers are saying they're not doing it."

Both sides of the debate say they agree on one thing: that everyone should have unfettered access to whatever legal content they seek. There's even some agreement that the biggest bandwidth hogs may need to pay more for the privilege.

Indeed, Comcast notes that all network operators use "network management techniques" to get through periods of peak loads, deploy spam and adware filters, and ensure that time-sensitive traffic gets proper treatment—so that phone calls made using Voice over Internet Protocol technologies, for example, don't get dropped. "There isn't a broadband network in the world that's unmanaged," Cohen tells BusinessWeek. And while both sides say they agree carriers need to do a better job of disclosing their network management policies to consumers, carriers are concerned that too much technical information would help hackers proliferate malware.

Putting the Issue Front and Center

Network owners say any regulation will impede U.S. competitiveness by stifling innovation and hurt consumers who benefit from network management practices they insist are "reasonable and nondiscriminatory."

Net Neutrality advocates argue just the opposite: that big U.S. carriers already have too much power. One recent Government Accountability Office report says the average American has only two broadband suppliers to choose from. With so much influence, says Harvard law professor Yochai Benkler, there's a disincentive for carriers to invest in capacity or innovation. Lack of competition "creates the opportunity and the incentive to extract rent by, among other things, discriminating against applications that compete with other high-value services," he says.

Even if the Feb. 25 hearing doesn't result in immediate changes, it helped give Net Neutrality advocates some of what they wanted: a bright light on their concerns that could make them less confounding and more relevant to the Net-using masses. "I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of the questioning," says Vuze's BianRosa. "It was a great opportunity to cut through a lot of the noise and get a clear picture of what's at stake."

Burrows is a senior writer for BusinessWeek, based in Silicon Valley . Kharif is a senior writer for BusinessWeek.com in Portland, Ore.