alternatehistory.com

Okay bear with me, because the topic here is a little more complex and specific than the title may imply:

The years 2004 and 2005 were a very important period in the history of FCC regulation of ISPs:
  • in February 2004, FCC Chairman first outlined a series of non-discrimination principles, which he called "Network Freedom", an early example of "net neutrality" being expressed as official government policy
  • on March 2, 2004 the DC Circut Court of Appeals handed down its decision in USTA v FCC, which proved to be the end for competitive local exchange carriers
  • in early 2005, the FCC (debatedly, to some extent) showed its willingness to enforce net neutrality in the Madison River case
  • also in 2005, the FCC relaxed common carrier regulations and unbundling requirements, while also modifying the four principles slightly
Basically, the long and short of it AIUI is that the mid aughts saw two very key aspects of the internet in America take shape -- network neutrality as official regulatory policy, and the consolidation of ISPs into a handful of monopolies.

What I'm interested in here is how, with a fairly late PoD (say the 2000 Election going differently), how could this new regulatory framework have turned out differently? For example, could the rise of ISP monopolies have been prevented? Alternatively, could the consolidation of OTL still happen, but with far less regulatory oversight (much earlier) and literally nothing to stop carriers from discriminating against or even blocking certain kinds of web traffic or sites? Or could TTL's internet see something else entirely? Or was the regulatory evolution outlined by Chairman Michael Powell and others pretty much an inevitability by 2000?

And just to be clear -- this is an AH discussion. While debating the details and/or merits of specific policies may well be to an extent inevitable in such a discussion, getting into current developments like last week's vote by the FCC should be discussed in this thread specifically, so as to not get us off-topic or this thread kicked to Chat. Thank you.
Top