FCC Chairman Genachowski’s recent letter has instigated a lot of talk about Net Neutrality, some of it apocalyptical (“The end of the Internet is here!”), some of it reasonable (“Nothing has changed, business as usual”). Both sides of the discussion have valid points to their arguments, but what really is the impact?

Without going into details (I will leave that to the experts), the FCC has reset the status quo to what it was before the Comcast court decision. As Genachowski himself states in the document “…this approach would restore the status quo”, resetting the ability of the FCC to manage broadband as they have in the past, preserving the FCC’s mission.

This is not “the nuclear option” that had been proposed by some, which would have made every aspect of broadband service open to regulation and restriction, and it is also not a capitulation to the Comcast ruling which would essentially make the FCC powerless against ISPs. Instead, as Genachowski himself headlined in his letter, this was a third way to look at the problem. Under this framework, the FCC would ensure that open access to networks is maintained, and focuses on the connections to the network, and not the content or services that run on that transport. Read more [+]