InsightaaS: Forrester Research is one of the world’s leading IT analyst firms — it is generally thought to be a key source of insight into and influence over use of new technologies. The company’s blog page acts as a “roll-up” of blogs by its analysts. Today, we excerpt a post by principal analyst Henry Dewing in which he looks at the discussion around net neutrality, and what it means for both providers and consumers of broadband services. Dewing notes that “Consumers are protected not by the FCC mandating network architectures and operations, but by the disclosure or transparency requirement which was upheld. If providers block, they must disclose.”
Who would think that the words “… we reject Verizon’s challenge to the Open Internet Order’s disclosure rules, we vacate both the anti-discrimination and the anti-blocking rules. We remand the case to the Commission for further proceedings …” Could set off a firestorm of public debate? All it really says is that broadband service providers must inform their customers if and when they block or hinder the passage of lawful information across their broadband connection.
The clear message the US Court of Appeals is sending to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is to regulate appropriately. The Appeals Court actually affirmed the appropriateness of the FCC’s role in ensuring fair access to the internet. The issue is that the FCC declared their authority based on broadband access being a “common carrier” service even though they had declared it to be a competitive service in earlier actions. So the issue the court dealt with is jurisdictional discretion, not outright authority or correctness of “net neutrality”…
Read the entire post: http://blogs.forrester.com/henry_dewing/14-01-17-discussions_are_anything_but_neutral_in_net_neutrality_debate
