'Net Neutrality' concept upheld by House judiciary committee

'Net Neutrality' concept upheld by House judiciary committee

WASHINGTON - The U.S. House Judiciary Committee approved the so-called "net neutrality" bill on Thursday by a 20-13 vote. Committee members felt that this bill would prevent companies like AT&T Inc. and Comcast Corp from dictating terms when it came to offering online content.

"When this market power is utilized to violate the nondiscriminatory features that drive Internet innovation and consumer choice, an antitrust remedy is clearly needed," said F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), who has been the main supporter and sponsor of the current bill. Lawmakers are seeking to modify the 1996 Telecommunications Act and one of the main issues facing them is whether to regulate the way network providers provide access to online content.

Companies like Google Inc, Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. have expressed worries that their would have to pay Internet service providers extra in order to give uninterrupted access to their services. The current bill seeks to avoid this scenario and wants to allow consumers to freely surf the net and not be bound by strict rules. "The lack of competition in the broadband marketplace presents a clear incentive for providers to leverage dominant market power over the broadband bottleneck to pre-select, favor or prioritize Internet content over their networks," said Sensenbrenner.

But companies like AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc. feel that such measures are unnecessary. They say that consumers need not feel threatened. "We are optimistic that the majority in Congress will see this legislation as an attempt to solve a problem that does not exist," said Tim McKone, AT&T executive vice president.

For the current legislation, it was felt that most lawmakers were in fact in two minds, but went along with the measure in order to preserve their hold over antitrust laws. "We like the principle of net neutrality (but) I think this is still a growing, vibrant, key industry that we don't want to take steps that will chill that growth and development," said Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat.