One of the first technology controversies that the new Democratic Congress will address when it meets in February, 2007, will be network neutrality. Here's what will happen: legislators will support new regulation.
Network neutrality refers to the idea that no traffic or activity on the Internet should be privileged over any other. As MIT's Tim Berners-Lee, likes to say: "If I pay to connect to the 'Net with a given quality of service, and you pay to connect to the 'Net with the same or higher quality of service, then you and I can communicate across the 'Net, with that quality of service."
This idea has dominated the way the Internet is regulated and has functioned since its inception. But in 2005, changes in FCC regulations that governed information services, as well as the growing importance of high-bandwidth multimedia applications such as gaming, video, and music sharing, suggested to some telecommunication executives that network providers could offer higher network priority to higher-paying companies and customers, allowing some services to operate faster or more predictably.
Those who prized the Internet's openness were appalled. They feared that innovation and entrepreneurialism would be stifled and that the Internet itself would fracture into a patchwork of gated communities with their own standards and practices. They fretted about what the Internet would look like if it was dominated by large, unimaginative, unresponsive telecommunications companies.
These worries struck a tremendous chord with ordinary users of the Internet. Last year, Congress received nearly 1 million signatures supporting network neutrality. In response, Democrats and moderate Republicans introduced no less than five bills with provisions for network neutrality.
All five bills were slapped down. Free-market ideologues within the Republican Congress repeated the arguments of the service providers: they said the providers had invested in their networks, owned them, and should, on the principle of economic liberty, be permitted to make any "enhancements" to their property that they wished. Conservative think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute elaborated further.
But that argument won't fly with the new Democrats. They know network neutrality regulation, far from representing a creeping expansion of government interference, will simply preserve the established openness of the Internet. Indeed, the failure to enact network neutrality regulation would implicitly authorize the service providers to override the separation of the transport and application layers of the Internet. And that would represent the erosion of the authority of the foundational Internet standards that has made the 'Net into the greatest force for economic expansion and human communications in history.
Sometime early in the New Year, therefore, Congress will reform the Telecommunications Act of 1996. They will require internet providers to allow consumers access to any application, content, or service.
Jason Pontin is the editor in chief and publisher of Technology Review, a magazine and daily news Website owned by MIT that identifies emerging technologies and describes their impact. From 1996 - 2002, he was the editor of Red Herring magazine.