Tom Wheeler's FCC Blog Post on Net Neutrality
Ensuring an Open Internet Now and for the Future
by: Tom Wheeler, FCC Chairman
January 14, 2014
Now that the Court of Appeals has ruled on the Open Internet (Net Neutrality) Order upholding the Commission’s authority to act under Section 706, I want to provide a further insight into my oft-repeated statement that I am pro-open Internet. This perspective will guide my actions and recommendations going forward.
The government, in the form of the FCC, is not going to take over the Internet. It is not going to dictate the architecture of the Internet. It is not going to do anything that gratuitously interferes with the organic evolution of the Internet in response to developments in technology, business models, and consumer behavior.
But the FCC also is not going to abandon its responsibility to oversee that broadband networks operate in the public interest. It is not going to ignore the historic reality that when a new network transitions to become an economic force that economic incentives begin to affect the public interest. This means that we will not disregard the possibility that exercises of economic power or of ideological preference by dominant network firms will diminish the value of the Internet to some or all segments of our society.
<snip>
In a sense, broadband systems, whether fixed or mobile, whether fiber, coax, copper, or radio, are the most significant electronic transmission systems in our history. That is because they facilitated and now sustain convergence of a great many of the previously separate communications activities on which we rely—telephony, video, public safety, data, and so forth. Or to put it more broadly, they facilitated and now sustain the Internet as we have come to know it.
The absolute necessity that there be government oversight of broadband networks stems from two facts. The networks support essential—in fact, increasingly essential—services for our society (and for everyone in the world, for that matter). And, there are not and are not likely to be many such networks. As with many of the communications networks of the past, broadband networks involve very high fixed costs and very large minimum efficient scale. So, to say it a little more abruptly, broadband networks are essential and they are likely in their relative scarcity, especially at the local level, to enable exercises of market power.
<snip>
http://www.fcc.gov/blog/ensuring-open-internet-now-and-future
= new reply since forum marked as read
