The House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 34-22 on Wednesday to defeat a Democrat-sponsored Net Neutrality amendment that would have prevented AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from creating “tiered” internet access. Members of the committee rejected Edward Markey’s measure that would have barred telcos from creating higher access fees from competing internet content companies.
The issue pits big telecoms companies against Google, Yahoo and eBay. Phone companies say they need a toll structure to fund the “last mile”. Services like Skype or Google Video, that compete directly with the phone company services, say they’ll be shut out.
Both sides agree the future of the internet could be at stake: telecoms companies say that unless they are allowed to charge more to construct a “fast lane” on the internet, they will not be able to build the high-speed networks that can handle broadband-hungry services such as video.
But internet content companies, backed by internet civil libertarians and consumer groups, say that price differentiation of this kind would jeopardise the freedom, growth and innovation of the internet.
The network neutrality issue is part of a much larger House bill, the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006, that significantly rewrites telecommunications laws. The bill focuses on providing the telephone companies with a national video franchise, eliminating the time-consuming and expensive local franchise process for Telcos.
But the bill is making news not for what it covers but for what it rejected: Net neutrality, explains Red Herring.
Given the cold reception in the House, the Web companies are turning their efforts to the Senate, where at least one bill requiring network neutrality has been introduced and more may be coming.
The Senate takes up its own rewrite of the Telecommunications Act later this year. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has introduced the Internet Nondiscrimination Act of 2006, which would ensure net neutrality. And Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Byron Dorgan (R-N.D.) are expected to introduce a bipartisan amendment supporting net neutrality.
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