Legal Niches

Broadband Providers Form TAG

By james_fudge

The country's biggest broadband providers and tech industry giants are seeking to calm the FCC's fervor over net neutrality with a massive "voluntary" initiative that focuses on a research group called TAG, or The Technical Advisory Group. The Technical Advisory Group was put together by AT&T, Comcast, Google, Intel, Microsoft and Verizon. The group is headed by Federal Communications Commission CTO Dale Hatfield and is compromised of mostly engineers.

The intention of TAG is to "minimize disputes over policy questions" - most notably - how broadband providers manage network traffic in the context of the FCC's proposed net neutrality rules. Over the next several weeks the TAG group will develop a "consensus on broadband network management practices" and identify how this affect internet broadband users.

The language the group uses is real murky here because it says it will identify "the impact from applications, content and devices that utilize the Internet." File sharing and video streaming will no doubt be mentioned a lot. Read More

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Full post as published by GamePolitics.com on June 09, 2010 (boomark / email).