Telecom hopefuls looking to grab a slice of the Obama administration’s $7.2 billion broadband stimulus package will have to wrangle with net neutrality clauses baked into the grant guidelines released last Wednesday.
The grant guidelines include the FCC’s internet policy statement drafted last year in response to Comcast Corporation’s clandestine program to derail customers using the BitTorrent protocol. The policy statement specifically prohibits companies from deliberately blocking or slowing Internet traffic on their network.
Telecom and cable companies have been predictably opposed to such legislation, and have alleged that it would trigger a dramatic rise in the cost of operation and a doomsday-level decline in network performance that would ultimately be footed by consumers. Proponents of net neutrality, meanwhile, have argued that such legislation is essential for the continued growth of free commerce and speech that have made the Internet an outrageous success.
The recent decision to include neutrality principles has received support from public interest groups like Free Press and Public Knowledge which continue to lobby for net neutrality laws.
The $7.2 billion will be disbursed in three rounds over next several years to develop infrastructure in unserved or underserved areas with low broadband penetration. The first $4.7 is earmarked for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) which will administer the grants to develop infrastructure in areas with less than 50% broadband availability. The remaining cash will be assigned to the USDA for the development of rural broadband deployment specifically designed to aid agriculture.
The broadband stimulus grant policy is also important in that it defines the government’s view of what constitutes a broadband connection. The terms define a downstream connection of no less than 768Kbps and an upstream bandwidth of no less than 200Kbps. Icrontic’s average reader may scoff at such bandwidth, but it eclipses the 56k standard plaguing less urbanized areas.
It is still too early to know if the grant’s neutrality clauses are the first steps in a broader initiative coming to bear under the newly-Democractic Genachowski FCC, but it is a glimmer of hope for an unimpeded Internet.
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