AT&T and friends not going "gentle into that good night" as end of an era looms

After having had an easy eight years of it under the previous administration, US telcos are coming up against a harsh and unwelcome reality; it is that times have changed and the FCC, once such a friendly and biddable poodle (as far as the incumbents were concerned anyway), is showing that it actually has teeth.

Initially, the big old telcos were so shocked when the revivified US regulator began to demonstrate that it is independent and does have a backbone that they fell into acrimonious disarray. However, as the months have passed and the issue of "net neutrality" looms ever larger over them, the likes of AT&T, Qwest and Verizon have decided to spend, and spend big, on that good old Washington DC pastime, the lobbying game.

The purse strings have been loosened, suits have been briefed and the PR machine is steaming away on overdrive in the run uop to yesterday's critical vote in the FCC. Traditional US telcos are doing everything they can to stymie the introduction of new regulations that would prohibit them from blocking or delaying content that, while coming from ISPs, perforce travels some of the way to its destination on 'traditional" telecoms networks.

The proposal, publicly espoused by FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, was passed unanimously, with all five FCC Commissioners (including the two Republican Party member Commissioners) voting for it. The draft regulation now goes out for public comment until January 14. Thereafter the FCC will review the feedback before a final ruling is issued next spring.

FCC Chairman Genachowski said, "I am pleased that there is broad agreement inside the Commission that we should move forward with a healthy and transparent process on an open Internet."

In essence the proposal is that operators like AT&T, Qwest and Verizon will be prevented from "discriminating against any legal content" that a third party wants to deliver to consumers on their networks.

That said, it does allow for "reasonable" network management sufficient to ensure the congestion-free passage of data, the tracing and removal of viruses and spam, and the blocking of unlawful content such as child pornography and incitement to racial violence. Thus there's still plenty of scope for the telcos sneakily to "manage" (i.e. discriminate against) traffic by falling back on claims that all they are really doing is housekeeping to ensure their networks don't get clogged.