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Comment by tjaerv | Hacker News Reader

Because that worked so well with the phone companies.

The actual statement read fairly explicit and useful to me. I'm no expert though. Basically:

  No blocking.
  No throttling. 
  Increased transparency
  No paid prioritization 
  Same rules apply to mobile internet

It's all subject to the caveat that the FCC is independent and they decide how and what exactly is implemented.

Those sound to me like the basic and less controversial components of net neutrality. It prevent disadvantaging specific sites, protocols or users if applied in a reasonable way.

https://medium.com/@PresidentObama/my-plan-for-a-free-and-op...

"Same rules for mobile internet" is pretty notable. Google only got on that bandwagon in September, for instance.

Obama's statement isn't quite as limp as the article title implied: "I am asking for an explicit ban on paid prioritization"

This isn't a request to "set up a committee to explore regulation ideas and form lobby groups from all stakeholders" - it sounds more like "I want to pass laws AND create an enforcement structure for those laws".

Ambitious and probably overly optimistic, but it's a good perspective from the top.

Well, the enforcement structure is already in place, AFAIK. This is just putting his finger on the scale as the FCC ponders the issues (and implying that if the FCC doesn't make the right choice by itself, it could be compelled by law).

Yeah - the general FCC structure is in place, but it sounds like the regulatory structure/principle is still being worked out. I suspect that it will be just another political football for a very long time, though...

Actually, it did work very well. It gave rise to regional CLECs and independent carriers like Covad and Sonic.net.

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