14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla is joining in the fight to convince the Federal Communications Commission to impose net neutrality rules and not to allow the creation of a high-speed Internet lane.
In a filing with the FCC, the nonprofit is urging for broadband Internet service providers to be reclassified as Title II “telecommunications service,” which would allow the FCC to maintain its authority over these companies.
The move comes after a federal court decided that the FCC didn’t have the power to impose net neutrality rules to Internet service providers given the companies’ classification, which was given several years ago. The FCC was left with a few options to fight back against this decision. One of them was to appeal the decision, while another was to go back on its previous decision and basically force the companies to comply to net neutrality rules.
However, a recent proposal made by the FCC has upset a lot of people, who have deemed the move as the end of net neutrality and the open Internet. That’s because the list of ideas that the FCC has includes the creation of a tiered Internet.
This means that various sites would be allowed to pay for a faster connection speed, in deals similar to the ones made by Netflix with Comcast and Verizon after users started complaining about the drop in quality. The video streaming company has accused the two ISPs of slowing down the service.
“Mozilla petitions the Federal Communications Commission to recognize that the enabling of communications within a last-mile terminating access network between a remote endpoint and the local subscribers of an Internet access service provider constitutes a delivery service provided by that Internet access service provider to that remote endpoint; and declare such a service to be a telecommunications service subject to Title II of the Communications Act. This action will help preserve the future of technology innovation online, particularly for online video communications and smartphone applications and services,” Mozilla writes.
The NGO believes that classifying delivery services as Title II telecommunications is a minimal, yet necessary, action that will help realize the statutory goals of the Communications Act in the modern era of network management and market operations.
“Mozilla urges the Commission to take the proposed steps and establish clearly its authority under the Communications Act to safeguard the remote delivery of host services through terminating last-mile networks,” Mozilla’s letter reads.
Tom Wheeler, FCC chairman, has defended the proposal saying that nothing has been set in stone just yet and that it’s quite possible that they will in fact resort to Title II if all else fails.