The Federal Communications Commission is all set to officially pass out the Net neutrality rules on Tuesday, December 21, 2010. This will provide a clear set of rules to the consumers, Internet service providers, developers, and device manufacturers.

The commission has been working on the development of Net neutrality rules for the last one year. It has five members: three Democrats and two Republicans. The democrats, their supporters, consumer advocates and Internet companies are in favor of strict Internet rules. Whereas, the Republicans along with major telephone and cable companies are lobbying for light rules.

Please remember a set of first Net neutrality principles was established by the FCC in 2005 and since then, the dispute was going on to have a fine set of rules. Julius Genachowski, Chairman FCC proposed a plan this month offering each side a bit of what they wants but it has told no camp is fully satisfied.

In starting, two democrats Mignon Clyburn and Michael Copps has been unwilling to support the Chairman’s plan as both of them believe it will favor major broadband providers. As per the FCC officials, the situation changed when Julius worked with all commissioners for satisfying their respective concerns.

Copps and Clyburn informed yesterday they will vote for the rules but they consider them very weak, even through Julius had altered the rules to address their issues. Clyburn said in a statement, “Open Internet is a crucial marketplace, and I believe it is appropriate for FCC to safeguard it by framing an order that establish clear rules to protect the consumer’s access”.

Large Internet companies like Amazon.com Inc., Skype, Netflix Inc. etc. expressed their views about the Commissioner’s proposals previously. The weakened rules are supposed to face strong inspection when Republicans will take over the House next year.

Senior representatives from FCC held a press conference on Monday afternoon to disclose an overview of order. Let us have a look on the top most provisions.

The first one is about the transparency. Both wired and wireless Internet service providers should disclose all the information necessary to avail the services to consumers, device makers and content providers. For example, if an operator is blocking some application then it will be known to the consumers.

The operators are free to manage data on their systems to deal with issues like network congestion and unwanted spam traffic only when they publicly disclose their network management techniques.

The second rule prohibits the traffic blocking on the Internet. It applies to both wired and wireless operators, but the conditions can vary for them. The wired networks will not be allowed to block any device, application, lawful content or services such as online calling service and Internet Video. On the contrary, this rule will be limited for wireless operators and prohibits the blocking to access applications and Websites that are compatible with carrier’s video or telephony services. The operators can include the services favoring network traffic from broadband providers or from business partners paying for priority.

The third rule prohibits the fixed wired broadband providers to prohibit the unreasonable network discrimination.

Jason Rosenbaum, senior online campaigns director, Progressive Change Campaign Committee said “Internet users across America will have lost a hero if Commissioner Copps caves to pressure from big business and supports FCC Chairman Genachowski’s fake Net neutrality rules written by AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon, the very companies the public is depending on the FCC to regulate strongly,”.

Let us hope for the best. At least, we have a startup set of Net neutrality rules. These rules can be altered or modified later on. The FCC meeting will be broadcasted live starting from 10:30AM E.T.