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For nearly a century, state regulators played an important role in telecommunications regulation. The 1934 Communications Act gave the Federal Communications Commission authority to regulate interstate telephone service, but explicitly left intrastate calls—which comprised 98% of Depression-era telephone traffic—to state public utility commissions. By the late 2000s, however, as landline telephony faded to obscurity, scholars and policymakers alike recognized that the era of comprehensive state telecommunications regulation had largely come to an end.Perhaps surprisingly, however, the first years of the Trump Administration have seen a resurgence in state telecommunications regulation—driven not by state institutional concerns, but by policy disagreements over net neutrality. This Article addresses the broader federalism questions raised by this net neutrality clash. Part I provides an overview of telecommunications federalism from the 1934 Communications Act through the present day, looking at the division of federal and state jurisdiction over traditional telephone service, wireless telephony, and information services. Part II examines the various steps that states have taken to regulate broadband providers' network management practices in response to the Commission's Restoring Internet Freedom Order and assesses the likelihood that these initiatives will survive a federal preemption challenge. Part III looks more broadly at the question of state authority to regulate broadband network management practices. It discusses the statutory and constitutional limits on state power to regulate broadband providers. Once the sphere of potential authority is defined, Part IV addresses how states should exercise this power and highlights alternative tools available for states that wish to shape the net neutrality debate.

Cet ouvrage offre un tour d'horizon des questions relatives à la neutralité et à l'ouverture d'internet: liberté d'information, non-discrimination dans l'accès à internet, problèmes de concurrence et de régulation dans une perspective comparative

A meta dicembre 2017, la Federal Communications Commission (Fee) degli Stati Uniti ha votato per riclassificare gli Internet Service Providers (isp, cioe fornitori di servizi che connettono Ie imprese e gli individui a internet: compagnie telefoniche, linee via cavo eec.) come servizi di informazione anziche come common carriers, «pub" blici vettori» (quindi assimilati ad altn fornitori di servizi pubblici). Benche se ne fosse discusso almeno dal 2003, la Fee e 2;iunta soltanto nel 2015, sotto 1'amministrazione Obama, alia classificazione del providers come vettori pubblici. Gli attuali componenri della Fee, la cui maggioranza rispecchia gli orientamenti dell'amministrazione Trump, hanno sceko di tornare alia precedente designazione come «servizi di infer mazione». Questa decisione, che ha suscitato pareri controversi nei circoli politici americani, offre 1'occasione per esaminare come Ie imprese affrondno 1'impatto delle nuove tecnologie.

The FCC's latest attempt to resurrect net neutrality risks slowing innovation and prohibiting practices that can improve network efficiency.
The post Why Resurrect Net Neutrality? appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

Provides a historical perspective to the debate on "net neutrality," ie, that the Internet & physical access to it ought to be universally available on uniform & nondiscriminatory terms. Here, it is argued that net neutrality is really the resurrection of the problematic notion of the "common carrier," which if implemented would likely harm those it sought to protect while advancing the interests of politically powerful economic elites. Adapted from the source document.

This book discusses the pros and cons of information and communication (ICT) neutrality. It tries to be as objective as possible from arguments of proponents and opponents, this way enabling readers to build their own opinion. It presents the history of the ongoing network neutrality debate, the various concepts it encompasses, and also some mathematical developments illustrating optimal strategies and potential counter-intuitive results, then extends the discussion to connected ICT domains. The book thus touches issues related to history, economics, law, networking, and mathematics. After an introductory chapter on the history of the topic, chapter 2 surveys and compares the various laws in place worldwide and discusses some implications of heterogeneous rules in several regions. Next, chapter 3 details the arguments put forward by the participants of the net neutrality debate. Chapter 4 then presents how the impact of neutral or non-neutral behaviors can be analyzed mathematically, with sometimes counter-intuitive results, and emphasizes the interest of modeling to avoid bad decisions. Chapter 5 illustrates that content providers may not always be on the pro-neutrality side, as there are situations where they may have an economic advantage with a non-neutral situation, e.g. when they are leaders on a market and create barriers to entry for competitors. Another related issue is covered in chapter 6, which discusses existing ways for ISPs to circumvent the packet-based rules and behave non-neutral without breaking the written law. Chapter 7 gives more insight on the role and possible non-neutral behavior of search engines, leading to another debate called the search neutrality debate. Chapter 8 focuses on e-commerce platforms and social networks, and investigates how they can influence users actions and opinions. The issue is linked to the debate on the transparency of algorithms which is active in Europe especially. Chapter 9 focuses on enforcing neutrality in practice through measurements: indeed, setting rules requires monitoring the activity of ICT actors in order to sanction non-appropriate behaviors and be proactive against new conducts. The chapter explains why this is challenging and what tools are currently available. Eventually, Chapter 10 briefly concludes the presentation and opens the debate.

AbstractWe compare content provision in the media Internet market under net neutrality and no net neutrality. We show that content provision in the two regimes depends on the one hand on the level of content differentiation, and on the other hand on the relation between network capacity and network traffic. If content is not very differentiated, the net neutrality regime provides more content than the no net neutrality regime. In addition, in the no net neutrality regime, a monopolist can arise. If content is sufficiently differentiated, but network capacity is not large relatively to network traffic, the net neutrality regime again provides more content than the no net neutrality regime. The reason is that when network capacity is small relative to network traffic, the no net neutrality regime reduces competition. This is so since the Content Provider with priority has an advantage over the Content Provider with no priority, which allows the former to attract consumers even without investing in content, while for the latter investment in content becomes ineffective to attract demand.

1. Introduction: a bit of history -- 2. Definitions -- 3. Pros and cons: the arguments in the debate -- 4. Mathematical analysis -- 5. Non-neutrality pushed by content providers -- 6. A more general view of neutrality -- 7. Search Neutrality -- 8. Algorithmic transparency -- 9. Tools to monitor neutrality -- 10. Conclusions.