Partisanship erupts over net neutrality

By Bobby Caina Calvan, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON -- A Senate showdown over free-flowing access to the Internet began unfolding today on Capitol Hill, as the chamber takes up the issue of “network neutrality.”

Republicans are trying to repeal rules put in place last year by the Federal Communications Commission that were meant to prevent Internet providers from wielding too much control over what flows through their networks.

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who chairs the commerce subcommittee on communications, technology and Internet, accused Republicans of wanting to “ imprison the Internet within the hands of the most powerful communications entities today to act as the gatekeepers.”

Republicans say the regulations, which are supposed to go into effect Nov. 20, will stifle innovation in an industry that has produced Google, Facebook and other services many now can’t live without.

Earlier this year, the GOP-led House voted to repeal the FCC’s rules. The Senate is expected to vote Thursday on the measure, sponsored by Texas Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison. By all accounts, the vote is expected to be close. President Obama has signaled that he is likely to veto the bill, if it makes it to his desk.

The country’s largest cable and telephone companies are urging the repeal, saying they should have the right to exercise control over the use of their networks, much like wireless communications industry now has.

“Everything that goes over the Internet today goes either through your telephone at home or television or whatever, through cable, out of your house or the airwaves,” Kerry said today on the Senate floor.

“But if we’re not having an open architecture on the Internet, then the people who control those access points can start discriminating about who gets access at what speed. And if you control who gets access at what speed and begin to charge more for that, you begin to have a profound impact on the ability of any business to develop and a profound impact on the access that consumers have come to anticipate with respect to the Internet.”

The Senate’s Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, agreed that the Internet has transformed how we do things.

“Simply, the growth of the Internet is one of the great success stories of our lifetime. Just 15 years ago, the thought that you could read a book, watch a ballgame, and video-conference with your kids all on a device the size of a magazine, I would have been something from science fiction,” he said.

“But the FCC’s regulations could jeopardize this future growth by dictating what sort of return businesses can earn on their investment,” McConnell said.

He called the regulations an “over-reaching attempt to ‘fix’ the Internet, when the Internet is not broken.”