Google and Verizon have announced that they are set to submit a proposal for legislation focused on net neutrality.

The proposal would allow the FCC to prevent discriminatory behaviour and the blocking of services and applications that consumers want to access, forbid prioritisation of services or traffic on the public internet, enforce transparency over services offered and network management and give the FCC enforcement authority.

“Google and Verizon have done what the FCC has so far failed to do: forge a meaningful compromise on net neutrality between the two sides,” said Jan Dawson, chief telecoms analyst at Ovum.

In a release this morning, Ovum noted a major loophole in the proposal. The ‘additional, differentiated online services’ category is vague. Despite the mention of prohibition on paid prioritisation, this category seems designed to allow some services to benefit from exactly that. Ovum sees the possible development of a ‘private internet’ separate from the public internet, but with different rules. Both companies were quick to defend this claim.