Keep single onramp for high-speed Internet service

THE ISSUE A Senate committee is considering a bill to allow high-speed Internet providers to charge different fees for different levels of service.

THE most sweeping changes in telecommunications law in a decade is at risk because of the inclusion of a proposal allowing phone and cable companies to create tiers of priority access to the Internet. Senator Inouye has recognized the proposal as an invitation for those companies to tailor the Internet's content and raise prices for consumers.

Inouye, ranking Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, is properly carrying the torch for what is called "Net neutrality," refusing to endorse the proposal by his good friend, Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, the committee chairman. The confrontation follows House approval of a bill that neglects to ensure neutral access to the Net.

Under the Stevens proposal, AT&T, Verizon and other telecommunications companies in control of the broadband market could charge higher fees for more demanding levels of service, such as transporting music and video. At the same time they could put controls over Internet companies' traffic.

"Whether acting as a bottleneck, a toll-taker or a gatekeeper, the broadband carriers propose to transform the Internet into something akin to a closed and proprietary system of centralized control," Google executive Vinton G. Cerf warned to Congress last week.

The Federal Communications Commission created the opening for the broadband carriers last August when it voted to deregulate phone companies' DSL Internet services, ostensibly to equalize them with cable broadband. Plans for them to force Internet companies to pay extra for the traffic they generate became known soon afterward.

Phone and cable operators, which control 99 percent of the broadband market, have a useful role in using their networks to block worms, viruses, spam and child pornography. They also should be allowed to block other sites at the user's request, but those decisions should be left to the consumer.

Provisions that would allow broadband carriers to go far beyond that through pricing strategies "fail to protect consumers and preserve an open Internet," Inouye said in a statement last week. "Under the current language, network operators will have the ability to dictate what the Internet of the future will look like, what content it will include and how it will operate."

Inouye is among eight Democrats and Sen. Olympia Snow, R-Maine, favoring an Internet Freedom Preservation Act, that would impose stricter safeguards. It is expected to be offered as an amendment to the more comprehensive bill before the Commerce Committee.

Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Sen. Joe Biden, that committee's ranking Democrat, said too few problems have occurred to justify Net neutrality laws. Biden said any abuses would result in an outcry. But Congress should not create a means to such abuse.