At first glance, Tuesday’s federal court ruling on Comcast looked like a clean win for the cable giant and for competitors including Time Warner and AT&T. The court, after all, ruled that Comcast could regulate high-speed Internet traffic over its own system and that a company that wanted to push its content through Comcast’s pipelines could not.
But the ruling might be only the beginning of a long campaign between Internet service providers and companies such as Skype, Google and Microsoft. The outcome is far from certain.
At issue is the wonky-sounding phrase “net neutrality.” In 2008, the Federal Communications Commission told Comcast and other big high-speed Internet companies that they must treat content that flows through their pipelines equally, whether it’s digitally lightweight e-mail or hefty movie files, by pushing it all through at the same speed.
Full story: Comcast ruling raises questions on FCC regulation – Washington Post