PC World’s Grant Gross has this piece about the thousands of commenters who have weighed in on net neutrality at the FCC. The deadline for reply comments in this proceeding was yesterday, and 670 parties filed such comments.
The Commission issued a Notice of Inquiry into the topic last March and since then, a whole lot of commenters have weighed in. Gross says that 29,000 comments have been filed but a search of the FCC database shows the tally at 26,896, although don’t do this search yourself — it crashed my computer.
Whatever the tally, that’s a whole lot of comments and perhaps a record-breaker for the FCC. Granted, many of them were of the ginned-up kind, spurred by public interest groups that exhorted individuals to weigh in on the matter.
Still, what once was a moribund topic is getting new life. As Public Knowledge’s Art Brodsky notes, even Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) filed reply comments. This is a rare occurrence indeed — Senators don’t usually file initial comments in FCC proceedings, much less reply comments.
At the same time that the Commission is wading through these comments, the issue of “open access” in the 700 MHz auction, a concept closely related to net neutrality, is causing a DC telecom policy firestorm. Therefore, my company, along with our partner Lightbulb Communications, is hosting an audio event on net neutrality.
So far we’ve lined up two great speakers — Johanna Shelton, the new Legislative Strategist and Policy Counsel for Google, and Bruce Byrd, Vice President and DC General Counsel for AT&T, two speakers who stand on polar opposite ends of this issue. This is going to be a great debate for those interested in this issue. Stay tuned for more speakers.
Cynthia Brumfield at 10:40 AM|Comments(0)
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