It is a victory for net neutrality and privacy online. It means that internet service providers (ISP) cannot throttle the internet, at their discretion:

“WASHINGTON - A recommendation to punish Comcast Corp. for blocking subscribers’ Internet traffic should serve as a warning to other service providers, the nation’s top telecommunications regulator said Friday.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin said he hopes his action will make network operators sensitive about putting “arbitrary limits on the way consumers can access information on the Internet.”

link: FCC chief hopes Comcast sanction serves as warning

By definition, if the ISP is to discriminate the type of traffic to throttle, it is a surveillance that violates the privacy of the customer. The question arises whether such surveillance also inspects the content of the traffic. Such monitoring would raise issues concerning the security of the information flow.

The Federal Communication Commission knows that this does not put this issue to rest. The telecommunication and cable companies know that a tiered system and a controlled internet simply means a huge increase in revenue.

Catherine Forsythe