Net Neutrality Expert Named New CTO at FCC
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Tuesday said he’s appointing Scott Jordan, who has done significant amounts of research on net neutrality, the agency’s chief technology officer, replacing Henning Schulzrinne. Industry officials said Schulzrinne has been active in policy formation at the FCC and sat in on numerous meetings they have attended. One carrier official predicted Tuesday that Jordan also will play an active pole in policy discussions at the agency.
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An FCC news release said Jordan is “widely known for his research on communications platforms, pricing, and differentiated services on the Internet” (http://bit.ly/YWurLf). “Scott has big shoes to fill,” Wheeler said.
Jordan comes to the FCC from the University of California-Irvine, where he’s a professor of computer science. In a recent interview, Jordan said it’s critical that the FCC get better at distinguishing between business policies and traffic management policies, as the agency develops revised net neutrality rules (CD WID Aug 12 p1).
In a 2011 paper, Jordan examined wireless vs. wireline net neutrality and the importance of better defining what constitutes “reasonable network management.” Many industry officials have predicted that in revising net neutrality rules, the FCC will impose the same rules on mobile Internet as on wireline (CD July 17 p1).
The paper said wireless providers face unique challenges. “These challenges include attenuation, multipath, interference, and handoffs,” the paper said (http://bit.ly/1ARwuOt). “Second, many wireless networks (especially cell phone networks) rely heavily upon their ability to offer satisfactory performance for telephone calls.” The paper concluded wireless carriers “are justified in using different traffic management techniques than wired networks, but only at and below the network layer.” In a 2009 paper, Jordan examined how the FCC can determine whether network management practices are reasonable (http://bit.ly/XPSGL2).
In a 2013 research paper, Jordan argued that rules governing device attachment will become “unsustainable” as network technologies converge and that Congress should pass a unified statute on device attachment (http://bit.ly/XPPbnC). In another 2013 paper (http://bit.ly/1ARv3Q2), Jordan proposed a model for how ISPs can set “tier prices, tier rates, and network capacity by considering both technical and economic issues."
Schulzrinne, named to the post by former Chairman Julius Genachowski in December 2011, will return to Columbia University, the agency said.