Gautham Nagesh at the Wall Street Journal (who was also the first to reveal many of the details of Tom Wheeler’s original net neutrality proposal) had a story last night confirming the buzz over the last few weeks that Wheeler is now exploring a new set of “hybrid” net neutrality rules that appear, on their face, to take parts of the plans that consumer groups want and parts of what the broadband players want… and comes out, in the end, with a plan that almost no one wants. There is something to the old saying that a good compromise leaves everyone a little unhappy, but it appears that the rules being contemplated right now might leave nearly everyone really unhappy. It’s not clear that’s a good result.

First, it’s important to note that the WSJ article only describes the plan in slightly vague generalities, and the specifics matter a lot in these situations. It’s tough to know exactly how good or how bad this is without those details, but there are some broad brush strokes of what the FCC is leaking now to see what sort of reaction there is.

The plan looks to be loosely based on a proposal Mozilla submitted back in May, in which the FCC sets up rules that sort of split the baby, by separating out the relationships directly between various internet providers, classifying that under Title II (common carrier rules), while leaving the last mile sections (the part delivered to you at your home or office) regulated under 706 as an “information service.” But then, it sets up very loose rules on top of that structure, that potentially have massive loopholes for the broadband players — and that’s where the specifics matter. The end result could be that the broadband players could still make deals for “differentiated services” to the end connection — which is what many fighting for net neutrality were most worried about. Here’s how the WSJ describes Wheeler’s current thinking:

Read the Full Article: Source – Tech Dirt
https://www.techdirt.com/blog/netneutrality/articles/20141031/05122328994/fcc-tests-waters-hybrid-net-neutrality-solution-that-almost-everyone-hates.shtml

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