Post election with a new FCC boss looming, we're starting to see the network neutrality debate rekindled. It has been confirmed that Congress will most definitely pursue network neutrality legislation next year. Carriers obviously would prefer that the government enforce neutrality on a case by case basis, while many worry that government lacks the competence to draft useful laws. AT&T's policy guru James Cicconi takes the opportunity to claim to PC World that there's a "consensus" that's been formed concerning network neutrality:Perhaps. There's others who think that AT&T's plan to cap users is a pre-emptive, anti-competitive shot at Internet video providers dressed up as a bogus fix for non-existent capacity strain. When such massive companies want to not only control and ration the bandwidth but also serve you content in an uncompetitive market, the chances are fairly good that at some point they'll behave badly.

While carriers would like you to believe the recent Comcast throttling crackdown highlights how neutrality infractions can be handled on a case by case basis, it's important to remember a few things. The FCC's "sanction" of Comcast created no new rules, resulted in no fine, didn't change the behavior of other ISPs who employ the same exact tactics, and may not even hold up under Comcast legal assault. That's not much of a deterrent for anti-competitive behavior.

That said, it's not clear that Congress is technically savvy enough to craft neutrality laws that would effectively prevent ISP skulduggery. It's more than likely that Congress's best effort would either be completely useless (think Can Spam Act), or actually harm ISPs' ability to do such things as ensure VoIP traffic prioritization.

But Cicconi's suggestion that there's been any consensus reached in the debate is a fairly large stretch. Things quieted down briefly over the last year (if you consider the Comcast throttling debate quiet), but only because no new laws were being proposed. A new Congressional push for neutrality laws will certainly revamp the obnoxious PR battle waged by both sides, who apparently believe the public isn't bright enough to understand the issue without the use of stick figures, dancing men in green tights, cartoons and/or flying saucers.