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from: MultiChannel News

Senate Panel Defeats Net Neutrality

By Ted Hearn 6/28/2006 12:53:00 PM

Washington -- The Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday rejected a network neutrality amendment, handing cable and phone broadband access providers yet another victory over a coalition that has demanded the application of strict nondiscrimination standards against entities that control access to millions of Internet users.

The panel voted 11 to 11 to defeat an amendment sponsored by Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), who had backing from Google, Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon, Microsoft and other firms that deliver voice, video, and information services and applications.

Under Senate rules, a tie vote means the amendment failed.

Snowe said the amendment was necessary to protect Internet innovation and investment that she said are threatened by anti-competitive designs by cable and phone companies.

"It protects the Internet as Americans have come to know it," Snowe said. "Net neutrality has been the founding principle of the Internet."

The underlying telecommunications bill (S. 2686) would establish a consumer-centric Internet bill of rights and would include up to $500,000 in fines meted out by the Federal Communications Commission. But the bill would not allow the FCC to write net neutrality regulations to govern the actions of broadband access providers, an approach adopted in a House-passed bill (H.R. 5252).

Senate Commerce Committee chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who is sponsoring the telecom bill, argued that net neutrality regulation would address a problem that did not exist.

"The regulatory approach is wrong," Stevens said, adding that discriminatory conduct has not been documented. "Right now, that's not the case."