Title II Reclassification Unnecessary to Ensure Net Neutrality Principles Survive, AT&T Says
A BroadbandUS.TV webcast on the future of net neutrality Friday quickly became a debate over whether the FCC needs to reclassify broadband as a Title II service in order to further net neutrality principles struck down last month by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (CD Jan 16 p1). That sort of debate is unnecessary, said AT&T Senior Vice President-Regulatory Bob Quinn, because ISPs have no desire to limit consumers’ Internet experiences.
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AT&T supported the FCC’s original net neutrality rule, Quinn said: “We've always contended that net neutrality was a solution in search of a problem.” When most ISPs saw the FCC’s 2010 Open Internet order, they realized that “we didn’t have to change our business practices,” he said. The idea that consumers should generally be able to access whatever they want over the Internet, and the ISP shouldn’t get in the way of that, “was business as usual to us.”
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has said the agency will soon issue guidelines for how to deal with net neutrality disputes on a case-by-case basis. None of the panelists knew what Wheeler had planned, and officials in other commissioners’ offices have told us they don’t know either. But any principles that do come out should be able to protect Internet openness despite broadband’s not being classified as a telecom service, said Quinn and Scott Cleland, Precursor Group president and chairman of NetCompetition.org, with members including AT&T.
Rules under the framework of Section 706 of the Communications Act “can do consumer protection,” Cleland said: The industry doesn’t want to block content or discriminate. “Having a cop on the beat” really isn’t a problem because ISPs have “zero interest business- or reputation-wise in doing something that falls outside the bounds,” he said.
It’s not the “wisest course for the FCC to engage in a big rulemaking here, and I don’t think it’s necessary,” Quinn said. “There’s no emergency that requires the FCC to wade into a rule battle that will devolve into a big Title II battle.” Net neutrality “sucks all of the oxygen out of the room,” bringing out “the farthest left and the farthest right” and turning it into “a huge food fight at the commission,” he said. Quinn suggested the FCC should get commitments from ISPs that they won’t change their network disclosures, and to “put it under a microscope” if they do.
Imagine a dining room table with china and candelabras resting on a tablecloth, said Cleland. Now imagine a magician saying he’s going to pull out the tablecloth and everything will remain on the table. “If you yank out the foundation that everything you see rests upon, it is disastrous, the amount of chill that it could create.” Some public interest groups may think that reclassifying broadband as Title II is a “legitimate cudgel,” but in the real world, for the “entire Internet and the entire e-commerce system of the world,” it would be “one of the largest bait-and-switches of history,” Cleland said.
There’s been “a very successful illusion” created “that somehow Title II is this great dreadful beast that rises above all else to smother everything in its ancient grasp,” said Harold Feld, senior vice president of Public Knowledge. “That’s just nonsense.” All of the investment not just in the telecom side but also on the edge side “took place under a set of expectations that were Title II, and the fact that Title II goes back to old days doesn’t mean that it’s not still relevant. The First Amendment is 225 years old -- it was written with quill and parchment before we even had texting! And most of us still regard it as a pretty relevant and fundamental law for protecting communication. The fact that something goes back a ways is not a sign that it’s necessarily going to be bad in a world that includes texting and FaceTime."
"You guys are making my argument for me,” said Quinn with a smile. “If you open up a rulemaking, this is what you're going to get: It’s going to be a Title II free for all. It doesn’t matter how narrow that rulemaking is; Title II is going to be the centerpiece of the arguments here, and whether or not we're going to bring back unbundling into fiber, and everything else that comes along with that,” Quinn said. “If [Wheeler] just thought that he was going to reinsert the no-blocking rule, it won’t matter. We're going to have the same proceeding that we had two years ago.” That’s “so unnecessary, because you've got a bunch of carriers -- a bunch of ISPs -- who are abiding by the old rules with their network disclosure statements.”