The attempt to fast track net neutrality through US Congress, albeit with some compromises, has been defeated after only a week. A bill proposed by Representative Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, failed to win sufficient support to advance to the Senate, which he had hoped to accomplish before the November mid-term elections.
That means legislative efforts to address net neutrality are over for now, since Congress will now take a recess until the elections, leaving the initiative back with the FCC.
“This development is a loss for consumers and a gain only for the extremes,” Waxman said in a statement. “We need to break the deadlock on net neutrality.” It is uncertain whether new legislation will be introduced after the elections.
He added: “If our efforts to find bipartisan consensus fail, the FCC should move forward under Title II. The bottom line is that we must protect the open Internet. If Congress can’t act, the FCC must.” However, new FCC rulings would be far more contentious than Waxman’s middle-of-the-road stance on neutrality. The FCC has been considering a proposal to reclassify parts of broadband as Title II common carrier services, which would give the regulator greater power to impose neutrality. A legislative directive would have given the FCC the authority to implement net neutrality without reclassification.
Meanwhile, the Aspen Institute has released a plan for making broadband available to 99% of the US population in the next decade. The proposal has been drawn up by Blair Levin, the former head of the National Broadband Plan who joined the non-profit institute earlier this year. It repeats many of the reforms to the Universal Service program which are advocated in the Broadband Plan, such as shifting the focus of the universal service fund from voice to broadband. It would also set a minimum data speed target of 4Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream.
Other echoes include clauses to distribute broadband funding based on market-based methods such as a reverse auction, and to create a broadband mobility fund aimed at bringing all states to a minimum level of 3G service.
The main differences of approach concern funding. While the National Broadband Plan calls on Congress to raise money, the Aspen Institute report does not, but suggests that $100m should be set aside from the USF to be awarded to the provider in five areas that gains the greatest efficiencies in broadband adoption.