The United States Appeals Court presiding over the District of Columbia has dealt a serious blow to the F.C.C. and small- and medium-sized Internet businesses this morning by vacating the Commission’s sanction against Comcast with regards to Network Neutrality regulations.

Network Neutrality regulations stipulated that carriers were forbidden from discriminating between certain types of traffic and customers, effectively requiring service providers to treat all traffic equally. Now that the Court has ruled that the F.C.C. lacks authority to impose such regulations, the market for Internet services could change dramatically over the course of the next several years barring congressional action.

Many analysts had feared that, were the Court to reach this decision, customers both on the business and consumer side may be forced to pay extra if they want to access certain websites or services much like current tiered cable plans. This could bode poorly for many businesses that rely on fast and cheap access so that they may provide customers with a positive end-user experience. Businesses that serve streaming video and audio content as well as those who host large files are likely to see impending changes should the ruling stand.

Reuters is reporting that the FCC is trying to regulate a minimum broadband speed that American households are delivered by our nation’s broadband companies (ie-Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner and AT&T are the largest) provide all of us. “The planned initiative, which will be proposed in the National Broadband Plan report to Congress next month, comes a week after Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) said it would build a super-fast Internet network for up to half a million people, a project that could pressure telecommunications companies to loosen their control of Web access in the United States.”
So once again is Google pushing the envelope on the way things are done technologically? From everything I am reading it appears that they are in fact doing that and this is forcing broadband companies to compete technologically to stay in business. This new initiative potentially by the FCC could be a great thing for all of us and how we get out internet delivered to us. Nice job Google!