Comcast would support a ban on paid prioritization as long as there is an exception for "specialized services" that benefit consumers, a company executive said this week.

Comcast Senior Executive VP David Cohen, who is generally the public face in Comcast's dealings with government policymakers, spoke about paid prioritization at the Free State Foundation's Telecom Policy Conference on Tuesday. (Video available on C-SPAN's website; the segment begins at 2:20.)

"How about if we agree to a prohibition on paid prioritization and we have a limited exception created in some way for this concept of specialized services," Cohen said.

Paid prioritization—in which websites or online services would pay Internet service providers for faster or more reliable access to Internet users—has been perhaps the most contentious subject in the net neutrality debate. The Federal Communications Commission recently voted to repeal net neutrality rules that prohibit blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization. Congress could pass a net neutrality law, but some of the major Republican proposals don't include a paid-prioritization ban.

The FCC's net neutrality rules are technically still in place but are slated to be taken off the books.

“Specialized services”

Cohen's suggestion of a paid-prioritization ban with an exception for specialized services is similar to an early version of net neutrality rules that was passed in 2010 but thrown out in court in 2014. (The FCC was able to impose stricter net neutrality rules in 2015; that's the set of rules that is being thrown out by the current FCC.)

The FCC in 2010 said that specialized services may share capacity with broadband networks but wouldn't be the same as regular broadband. There has never been a great definition of the term, but the 2010 FCC said that broadband providers' facilities-based VoIP and Internet Protocol-video offerings would be included.

These services "differ from broadband Internet access service and may drive additional private investment in broadband networks and provide end users valued services, supplementing the benefits of the open Internet," the FCC said at the time.

Under the 2010 rules, ISPs could have charged other companies for the right to offer specialized services over broadband networks.

Cohen didn't say exactly what types of future services should be covered by an exemption for specialized services. But the services may come along soon enough, he said.

"There is a recognition that something might come along that is not anti-competitive, that is pro-consumer, that is a specialized service available not to every user of the Internet, [and] that would be in consumers' interests and in the public interest," Cohen said.

Comcast deleted net neutrality pledge

Comcast's net neutrality promises have changed over time. Starting in 2014, a Comcast webpage said that the company won't block or throttle lawful Internet content and that it "doesn't prioritize Internet traffic or create paid fast lanes."

That changed in April 2017, within hours of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announcing his plan to repeal net neutrality rules. Comcast now says, "We do not block, slow down, or discriminate against lawful content," but deleted the statement that it does not prioritize traffic or create paid fast lanes.

Comcast hasn't implemented paid prioritization yet and has said it has no plans to do so. But deleting the "no paid prioritization" statement could help Comcast charge for prioritization without facing punishment from the Federal Trade Commission, which can take action against companies that break promises to consumers.

Comcast has previously said that paid prioritization should not be banned entirely but that there should be limits on "anti-competitive paid prioritization."

Verizon and AT&T

Verizon says on its website that it won't be charging for prioritization. "We will not accept payments from any company to deliver its traffic faster or sooner than other traffic on our consumer broadband service, nor will we deliver our affiliates' Internet traffic faster or sooner than third parties," the Verizon site says.

Verizon Senior VP Kathleen Grillo was on the Free State Foundation panel along with Cohen. She said that Verizon is willing to be part of a debate over legislation on paid prioritization, but she didn't specify whether the company would support a total ban on the practice.

Verizon played the biggest role in killing the FCC's first net neutrality rules, having filed the lawsuit that led to the 2014 court decision against the FCC. During oral arguments in that case, Verizon said it should have the right to block content from online services that don't pay Verizon to carry their traffic to consumers.

AT&T recently said it is interested in paid prioritization for "new technologies like autonomous cars, remote surgery, enhanced first responder communications, and virtual reality services."

Online services “should pay”

The Free State Foundation panel also featured an executive from Cisco, which sells networking gear to ISPs.

Cisco Global Government Affairs VP Jeffrey Campbell argued that paid prioritization is needed for remote surgery and real-time video chats.

"When there's congestion, you either drop packets randomly or you drop them intelligently by using some sort of prioritization scheme," Campbell said. "I would posit that there are a lot of benefits to intelligently deciding what traffic has better quality of service than other things."

Moreover, "the people who benefit from [prioritization] should pay for it," and those payments will spur investments in networks, he said. "The only issue here that we have to worry about is whether it should be used for anti-competitive purposes," Campbell said.

Even strictest FCC rules had exceptions

But Campbell's examples of remote surgery and real-time video chats aren't relevant to the FCC's ban on paid prioritization, said VP Chris Lewis of consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge. Even the strictest version of net neutrality rules—the one passed in 2015, which is now being repealed—had exceptions to cover those situations, he said.

"Let's remember the 2015 rules had an allowance for reasonable network management, which is just what Jeff was describing: the ability for a network to say that things that are in real time need to be managed properly by the ISP," Lewis said.

"What the rules didn't allow for is to say that a specific service, perhaps one that's not owned by the ISP, would get degraded or would get slowed down," he also said.

The FCC's 2015 net neutrality order also said that prioritization of telemedicine services could be given isolated network capacity in order to be exempted from the rules.

Cohen said that Congress may come up with a paid-prioritization compromise "if rational people will sit down and talk about this" and "stop playing politics." Cohen said that US Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) proposed a net neutrality law that would have banned paid prioritization, but he "has yet to have any Democrat willing to sit down with him and discuss it."

Democrats have been pushing for a full restoration of the 2015 net neutrality rules.

Lewis noted that the Walden proposal to ban blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization would have forbidden the FCC from imposing further regulations.

"It took away any latitude for the FCC to do anything outside of those narrow rules," Lewis said. "The FCC would be out of the business of protecting consumers of broadband."

Another proposal from Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) would allow ISPs to create paid fast lanes, prohibit state governments from enacting their own net neutrality laws, and prohibit the FCC from imposing any type of common carrier regulations on broadband providers.

Lewis is hoping that Congress won't gut the FCC's consumer-protection authority as part of net neutrality legislation.

"When it comes to out-and-out harmful discrimination on the network by ISPs, [we need] a cop on the beat that has the latitude to make specific rules as business practices develop and change," Lewis said.