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The House of Representatives passed the Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006 on Thursday, which would break the localised monopolies of cable companies and open up networks for broadband provision to greater competition, by doing away with a system that requires each potential provider to negotiate with each district separately.

More controversially, a much fought over amendment was similarly done away with: strict provisions to ensure that telecomms providers cannot charge extra for a premium quality Internet service and choke the access for a standard service, did not make it through the vote.

Such 'Net neutrality' has been a key concern of advocacy groups such as the 'It's Our Net Coalition' founded by Amazon.com, eBay, Google, IAC/InterActiveCorp, Microsoft and Yahoo!. Googletter of which publicly

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campaigned to get its millions of users to lobby on the issue.

In a statement, It's Our Net Coalition vowed to fight on as the legislation moves on to the Senate, where it already commands support. The group says that there is already a Bill being positioned in the Senate with bi-partisan support and strongly in favour of Net neutrality.

In response, groups sponsored by the communications companies which say the Internet should not be regulated, such as the Hands Off Our Internet body, describe the arguments from supporters of Net neutrality as 'scare tactics more appropriate to the current remake of 'The Omen'.

'Given last night's vote, there's pretty clear evidence that regulating Net neutrality is woefully unpopular on both sides of the aisle.'

The thing that is common to both sides of the argument is that both camps claim to represent the interests of Internet users, but are heavily partisan and funded by the large corporates that are concerned ultimately with what's at stake for them in this legislation. However, it's an issue that will be decided one way or another by the financial and marketing powers of these giants and will ultimately affect every Net user: it's time to take sides. Leave your comment via the link below.