Net Neutrality Comments Approach a Million

The debate also continued on Capitol Hill. Don’t reclassify broadband as a Title II Communications Act telecom service, said House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., at a briefing. “Our position has long been the Internet has flourished without interference from regulators and that should continue,” Walden said. “There should be no lack of clarity in my position.” He criticized the very notion that Title II would prevent paid prioritization deals and allow for stronger net neutrality rules as its advocates contend. Title II authority “will not prohibit fast lanes,” Walden said. “You just need to read Title II, and that authority is there."

Others disagreed. “Achieving strong net neutrality is critical to maintaining a vibrant, open Internet to promote free expression, diversity of content, and continued innovation,” said Netflix’s filing in docket 14-28 (http://bit.ly/1t4GPlS). To prevent ISPs from impeding, favoring or charging for Internet services that consumers choose to use, “the Commission should adopt clear enforceable anti-discrimination and no-blocking rules for the last mile. The Commission also must require ISPs to provide sufficient interconnection to cover the capacity demanded and paid for by their customers, without charging access tolls to online content providers,” Netflix said. The commission’s proposal “does little to protect the open Internet,” the filing said, because by endorsing the concept of paid prioritization, “as well as ambiguous enforcement standards and processes, the Commission’s proposed rules arguably turn the objective of Internet openness on its head -- allowing the Internet to look more like a closed platform, such as a cable television service.” Title II is “a solid basis to adopt prohibitions on blocking and unreasonable discrimination by ISPs,” said Netflix, which said opposition to using Title II “is largely political, not legal. Relying on Section 706 authority “is a recipe for ‘weak tea'” that is likely to be both legally unsatisfying to the courts and substantively unsatisfying to Internet users, said Netflix.

The “commercial reasonableness” proposal under consideration is insufficient and far too vague to effectively police discrimination and blocking, said Comptel. It would “allow (and indeed invite) broadband providers to discriminate against individual edge providers,” it said. Broadband providers “have made no secret of their desire to impose new costs on edge providers, and they have the leverage to do so,” said the group. It called for banning paid prioritization outright.

Classifying broadband as a Title II telecom service would make it “clear that service providers -- be they wired or wireless -- cannot create a two-tiered internet,” said Access Sonoma Broadband, the Benton Foundation and Public Knowledge in a 117-page filing (http://bit.ly/1qfsJk9). That not only means prohibiting fast and slow lanes, “it should also include a prohibition against metered and unmetered lanes,” they said. Commercially reasonable standards is a “subjective standard that is prone to abuse,” the filing said. Abandoning net neutrality in favor of Internet fast lanes would jeopardize future innovation and core consumer protections, AARP commented (http://bit.ly/1nK97Sn).

The minimal regulatory authority from treating broadband as an information service “is not sufficient authority,” said the Computer & Communications Industry Association (http://bit.ly/1r4bMao). CCIA called for the adoption of Title II rules that ensure consumers “can obtain, from any source, whatever lawful content they choose, and can likewise upload and transmit content to any Internet destination of their choice.” But USTelecom and some other ISP-allied groups said Title II would be the wrong approach.

Title II Opposition

The NPRM inclusion of reclassifying broadband as Title II “unnecessarily and troublingly strays” from the path set out by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, said NCTA (http://bit.ly/1qHYBdb). Saying the commission “now stands at a crossroads,” with “the continued vibrancy of the Internet at stake,” NCTA said the agency has already decided broadband is an information service. Jettisoning that classification to “start over by introducing heavy-handed common-carrier regulation under Title II ... would be a disastrous policy reversal,” said the association. The current transparency regime is sufficient and further regulations “would impose significant, unwarranted burdens on broadband providers without meaningfully helping consumers,” NCTA said. Any new no-blocking rules “should avoid dictating what minimum levels of service would be deemed ‘effectively usable,'” and imposing commercial reasonableness obligations on ISPs when negotiating with edge providers is premature, NCTA said. The commission should not adopt an outright ban on “paid prioritization,” NCTA said, asserting ISPs do not engage in blocking or censorship. Proponents of “overly invasive broadband regulation have cried wolf before,” it said.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce hosted Walden and several panelists for a Capitol Hill briefing where they cautioned against Title II reclassification. Robert McDowell, a Hudson Institute visiting fellow who was a Republican FCC commissioner, reiterated the need for “a true economic study” to diagnose any perceived ills that net neutrality would fix. “Be very careful what you wish for under Title II,” McDowell said, arguing it allows for tiered pricing and the two-sided market that technology companies have said Title II will avoid. “Title II’s all about the exact opposite of what they're arguing for.”

These harms that net neutrality rules would fix have “just not materialized,” said Harold Ford, an honorary co-chairman of Broadband for America and former Democratic representative from Tennessee. Broadband for America counts ISPs among its members. Phoenix Center President Larry Spiwak dismissed calls for net neutrality rules as little more than an “overall desire for just having regulation.” It’s an “easy soundbite” to frame the issue as one of fast and slow lanes, he said.

"Many believe that a regulatory agency exercising its regulatory authority over net neutrality conflicts with our support for the multistakeholder model of Internet governance,” said NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling, who spoke at the Internet Governance Forum-USA conference Wednesday. “We don’t think so."

"We know there’s a lot of debate about Title I and Title II,” said Strickling. “We want to look at the entire end-to-end delivery of content to consumers and understand where, if anywhere, in that framework there might be issues for consumers,” he said. “Is this an issue with the Title I service that’s offered to consumers, or should our concern be with services offered by the Internet Service Providers to content providers?” he asked. These questions will be addressed as “we work our way through the comments,” he said. ,