Backing Barack Obama's administration's promise to effect "net neutrality," or to level the transfer of all information over the Internet, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced its public support of the idea.
FCC President Julius Genachowski said Monday that the commission would embrace net neutrality, and have expanded the terms by which they would do so to include opening all wireless networks.
The principle of "net neutrality" sprung from debate over whether certain Internet service providers (ISP) like Comcast and Verizon should be able to offer preferential treatment to commercial and corporate partners.
This means that all packet transfer, or movement of information through the Internet, would be treated exactly the same, essentially allowing these companies to slow down or even halt bandwidth applications that are not their partners.
The newest addition to the net neutrality debate is the inclusion of wireless devices under its jurisdiction.
"If they do implement a set of rules that does require wireless operators to open up their networks, that will have a profound impact on Penn State students," said Matt Jackson, professor of telecommunications. Indeed, it might allow people on certain providers to do more file sharing, he said.
Though it may seem fair and simple that there should be a level playing field for all Internet service providers, Rob Frieden, professor of telecommunications, agreed with Jackson that there need to be regulations in certain cases.
This idea is articulated in such time-sensitive data transfers as online phone calls and doctors looking at X-rays over the Internet.
"Some content should have priority over the other," Jackson said, adding the issue is "making sure those decisions aren't being made in a way to hurt the competitors of the broadband providers."
Jackson said he thinks as long as the new rules are transparent and available to the public, net neutrality could be a good thing.
"You don't want Internet service providers deliberately dropping packets or blocking traffic ... to discipline customers and competitors," he said. "There are going to be some instances where you want some kind of discrimination."
Frieden likened the current service to different classes in airplanes or a high occupancy vehicle lane on a highway.
"If, for example, I want to watch March Madness basketball on my computer, I want those critical bits to be processed with priority," he said. "Consumers or content providers voluntarily would pay more for superior service."
The problem with this, Frieden said, is if there are absolutely no rules regulating packet transfer, it's easy for Internet service providers to claim congestion or networking management problems to excuse poor service when really they are trying to handicap competitors.
When it comes down to finding the perfect balance of rules and freedom, Jackson said the devil is in the details.
"I think it's important because it's not very easy for the individual consumer to jump from provider to provider to access what they want at what they feel is a reasonable pay scale," said Gerald Santoro, assistant professor of information sciences and technology at Penn State.
He said that although this announcement marks a step in the FCC's pursuit of net neutrality, legislation may not come to fruition for another year or so, allowing time for debate and lawsuits to change the dynamic.
