Markey Still Wants A Net Neutrality Law
House Democrat Sees Need For ‘Overarching’ Legislation
By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 3/28/2008 10:47:00 AM
Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, commended Comcast on its promise to work with BitTorrent and make peer-to-peer applications work more efficiently, but said “overarching” net neutrality legislation is still needed.
Markey last month introduced a bill with strong language supporting net neutrality principles that would give the Federal Communications Commission one year to study Internet-related competition issues.
“Comcast deserves credit for taking this action,” Markey said in a statement Thursday about Comcast’s announced BitTorrent collaboration.
However, he said, “even if today’s announced discussions prove successful, they may ultimately involve only the policies of one broadband provider with respect to Internet traffic over its network.”
Markey’s statement continued, “As a result, I believe this episode underscores the continuing need for overarching legislation so that all broadband providers and affected providers of content, applications and services are covered.”
Markey said the bill he introduced Feb. 12 with Rep. Chip Pickering (R-Miss.), named the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008, would establish “national broadband policy to protect Internet freedom for entrepreneurs and consumers.”
Comcast said it plans to migrate by year-end 2008 to a bandwidth-management technique that is “protocol agnostic.” That means that instead of throttling back traffic for specific applications like BitTorrent, Comcast will impose traffic limits only on those users who consume the most bandwidth.
FCC chairman Kevin Martin said in a statement he was “pleased that Comcast reversed course” in deciding to work with BitTorrent, but added that the operator should commit to a specific date when it will stop throttling back individual applications.
In their announcement Thursday, both BitTorrent and Comcast said their goal is to resolve the technical issues through private business discussions without the need for government intervention.
“BitTorrent and Comcast can serve consumers best by working together along with the broader ISP and Internet community to jointly develop more efficient networks and applications,” said BitTorrent CEO Doug Walker. “This should prove to be a productive partnership that will provide consumers with a better Internet experience.”
Markey said that he intends “to monitor the ongoing discussions to see if they result in a material change in Comcast’s controversial network management techniques and whether any future changes adequately protect innovation, openness and consumer choice on the Internet.”
The FCC has scheduled an April 17 hearing at Stanford University on network management practices of broadband service providers, a follow-up to its meeting on the topic at Harvard Law School last month during which Comcast was grilled over its P2P policies.
