• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, October 16, 2009

The Federal Communications Commission hasn't even drafted proposed neutrality rules, but that's not stopping lawmakers, companies and a host of outside organizations from flooding the agency with objections.

"Broadband service providers have invested billions of dollars in building and upgrading their networks," a group of 18 U.S. senators said in a letter sent this week to FCC chair Julius Genachowski. "Burdensome regulations will have a chilling effect on further private sector investment, at a time when the U.S. economy can least afford such an impact."

A coalition of 72 members of the House of Representatives likewise urged that the FCC take a "restrained" approach. "In light of the growth and innovation in new applications that the current regime has enabled, as compared to the limited evidence demonstrating any tangible harm, we would urge you to avoid tentative conclusions which favor government regulations," they write.

Also, 44 companies including Cisco Systems, Corning and Nokia have jumped on the bandwagon to warn that new regulations could hinder investment.

AT&T, meanwhile, is busy arguing that content companies (that is, Google) violate neutrality principles by excluding Web sites from the search results -- despite the vast difference between preventing consumers from reaching certain sites and omitting them from published listings.

Even the union that represents telecom employees, the Communication Workers of America, has weighed in. That group sent a letter to Genachowski asking that the FCC ensure that the rulemaking "does not have an adverse impact on investment and job creation."

Bizarrely, the union takes aim at Google by complaining that Google has a higher market cap than AT&T, yet employs fewer people and has lower capital expenditures. Since when did market cap correlate with either number of employees or expenditures?

For all the rhetoric, it's worth remembering that net neutrality rules appear aimed more at maintaining the status quo than changing it. Genachowski's proposal would merely codify the agency's 2005 principles stating that consumers are entitled to access all lawful content and applications, while also specifying that network providers can't discriminate and need to fully disclose traffic management techniques. Nothing in that proposal seems like the type of radical change that would cause companies to stop building their broadband networks.