Congress Gives The FCC An Earful On Its Despised Plan To Kill Net Neutrality

from the Comcastic dept

At this point, more than sixteen million comments have been filed in response to the FCC's myopic plan to kill net neutrality protections, the majority of them in fierce opposition to the idea. We've also noted how more than 900 startups, countless engineers, and a wave of large companies and websites have similarly urged Ajit Pai to stop, pause, and actually listen to what the majority of the country is saying. And what they're saying is that they want Title II and net neutrality protections to remain in place to protect them from giant telecom duopolies with long histories of fiercely-anti-competitive behavior.

Unfortunately. there's no indication that the Ajit-Pai lead FCC much cares. Pai's FCC has made every effort to comically try to downplay this massive wave of opposition, and dress up the agency's blatant giant gift to Comcast, AT&T and Verizon as an ingenious attempt to somehow restore "freedom" to the internet (yeah, big fucking citation needed).

Hoping to perhaps pressure Pai further, 11 Representatives and 21 Senators last week sent a formal comment to the FCC (pdf) insisting that the agency's plan to gut net neutrality protections not only ignores the public interest, but the law as well:

We, as members of Congress who also sit on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, submit these comments out of deep concern that the FCC’s proposal to undo its net neutrality rules fundamentally and profoundly runs counter to the law. As participants either in the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 or in decisions on whether to update the Act, we write to provide our unique insight into the meaning and intent of the law.

The cornerstone of Pai's plan is to reverse the agency's 2015 decision to classify broadband providers as common carriers under the Telecommunications Act. That, in turn, is part of a long-standing AT&T, Comcast and Verizon effort to gut meaningful regulatory oversight of broadband providers and replace it with the policy equivalent of fluff and nonsense. And in a competitive market that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, since you could trust market competition to keep ISPs on their best behavior in terms of pricing, net neutrality, privacy, and everything else.

But as you might have noticed if you've looked at your Comcast bill lately, or paid any attention to the rotating crop of sleazy behavior by companies like AT&T, the broadband market isn't competitive. In fact, decades of turning a blind eye to a lack of competition has left it downright hostile to any new disruptive entrants. As such, reducing what limited protections consumers and competitors currently enjoy would have dramatic, negative repercussions on consumer wallets and the health of the internet.

And while the FCC does have the authority to interpret the Telecom Act as it sees fit (much like Wheeler did in 2015), the Senators and Representatives are quick to point out in their letter that Pai and friends are twisting Congressional intent to flimsily justify their decision to reclassify ISPs as an “information service" rather than a "telecommunications service" (you can check out our primer on this entire debate -- and why this distinction matters -- here):

"While the technology has changed, the policies to which we agreed have remained firm the law still directs the FCC to look at the network infrastructure carrying data as distinct from the services that create the data. Using today’s technology that means the law directs the FCC to look at ISP services as distinct from those services that ride over the networks. The Commission’s proposal performs a historical sleight of hand that impermissibly conflates this fundamental distinction . The FCC proposes to treat network infrastructure as information services because the infrastructure gives access to the services running over their networks. The FCC contends that ISPs are therefore “offering the capability” to use the services that create the content. However this suggestion obliterates the distinction that Congress set in to law-we meant for the FCC to consider services that carry data separately from those that create data. The FCC’s proposal would therefore read this fundamental choice that we made out of the law. Under the proposal’s suggestion, no service could be a telecommunications service going forward.

The lawmakers are also quick to lambast the FCC for ignoring the massive groundswell of public opposition to reversal of the rules, as well as the agency's relentless focus on using network investment as the sole cornerstone for determining whether the rules are useful:

"Americans overwhelming support stronger and clearer privacy rules. Yet the Commission—without comment—proposes to eliminate before-the-fact protections at the FCC in favor of an enforcement-only approach. The FCC should not degrade people’s privacy rights without thorough consideration. Instead of considering these critical national priorities, the proposal single-mindedly concentrates on one issue to the exclusion of all others: the raw dollars spent on network deployment. This narrow focus is clearly contrary to the public interest—if we had intended network investment to be the sole measure by which the FCC determines policy, we would have specifically written that into the law.

The problem, of course, is that ISP lobbyists have successfully managed to submerge this debate under the idiot-din of partisan politics, despite the health of the internet and broadband competition being of benefit to everyone. Polls repeatedly find that net neutrality protections have broad, bipartisan support among consumers of all political ideologies, but by framing this as a partisan debate, ISPs and their loyal, paid allies have successfully bogged the conversation down in inane partisan fisticuffs, sadly convincing an all-too-broad segment of the public that net neutrality is "a government takeover of the internet."

As such, the fact that this particular letter was written largely by Democratic lawmakers only makes it fodder to be ignored by partisans, and it it shouldn't be. Net neutrality is about preventing massive, incumbent ISPs from abusing a lack of broadband competition in a rotating crop of obnoxious, creative ways. Were either party actually interested in shaking off ISP campaign contributions and improving said competition we might be having a different conversation, but until then net neutrality is the only thing standing between a healthy, competitive internet and the predatory whims of regional telecom duopolies.

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Filed Under: ajit pai, congress, fcc, net neutrality, open internet