The nation's top telecom regulator is tipping his hand a bit more on network neutrality.You see the problem here, don't you?
While FCC chairman Tom Wheeler wouldn't say outright how he intends to respond to a recent court decision overturning his agency's rule barring Internet providers from blocking Web traffic, he appears to be leaning increasingly toward using the FCC's existing legal authority to regulate broadband providers.
Industry watchers say this approach would likely turn on a part of the Communications Act known as Section 706, which gives the FCC authority to promote broadband deployment. Moving in that direction would put more distance between Wheeler and another alternative that's been floated, which is to reclassify Internet service provders (ISPs) as a kind of utility (making them much more like the phone companies the FCC already regulates strongly).
What happens when the next Michael Powell, a corporate tool nonpareille ends up running the FCC, and they decide, much as Powell did, that eliminating regulation will magically promote broadband.
This is what has given the United States the slowest and most expensive Internet access in the developed world.
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