The FCC has issued its rules on net neutrality, and it shuts down a 5G technology called, "Network Slicing," which some carriers were looking as a back door into creating for pay fast lanes.
That's a nice development:
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has released the final text of its net neutrality order, adding changes that appear to rule out so-called "fast lanes" for applications that some advocates feared would undermine it.
America's telecoms regulator voted last month to adopt an order to reinstate net neutrality rules overturned by the Trump administration. These reclassify internet access as a "common carrier" service under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, requiring service providers to treat all traffic equally.
Yet there had been concerns raised that new technology introduced with 5G networks would allow the creation of what had been labelled "fast lanes" for some applications, for which the carrier would be able to charge a premium.
In other words, while telcos would be banned from throttling user connections, they might achieve the same effect by offering a paid-for boost instead.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) made exactly this point following the FCC's release of the draft rules.
………
The final version of the order now contains text that says: "We clarify that a BIAS (Broadband Internet Access Service) provider's decision to speed up 'on the basis of Internet content, applications, or services' would 'impair or degrade' other content, applications, or services which are not given the same treatment."
The technology that sparked those concerns is network slicing, a feature of 5G enabled with the rollout of full 5G Standalone (5G SA) networks. This can be likened to virtualization for networks, allowing multiple logical networks, each with different characteristics, to operate over the same infrastructure.
Once again, good policy and good politics.
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