Several Civil Rights Groups Back Using Section 706
The Minority Media and Telecommunications Council and 41 other civil rights and social services organizations essentially backed FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s net neutrality strategy, including basing rules on Section 706. At a Monday news conference, MMTC cited concerns that using Title II would deter deployment of more broadband into minority communities. In doing so, they echoed the anti-Title II arguments of many broadband providers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (CD July 18 p1). One FCC official predicted it would make it more difficult for commission Democrats to support Title II reclassification, but others downplayed the impact.
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"There are minority groups on both sides of this issue,” said Public Knowledge Senior Staff Attorney John Bergmayer, who cited National Hispanic Media Coalition, Color of Change and other organizations supporting Title II. “I think all the Commissioners will be interested in hearing from everyone but will ultimately come to their own conclusions about the merits, particularly when it’s a question of legal authority or administrative law."
With minorities trailing in Internet adoption, Martin Chavez, senior advisor at the Hispanic Telecommunications and Technology Partnership, said at the news conference, “we fear [Title II] would cause a truncation of money flowing into the expansion of the Internet. It’s hard to adopt something if it is shrinking.” Title II would “cause more harm than good,” said MMTC President David Honig, in the same arguments the groups made in comments (http://bit.ly/1p37jQQ) filed with the FCC on Friday. The classification would mean laws used to deal with “monopoly railroads and telephone companies” would apply to the “modern, competitive” broadband industry. The groups’ comments follow those of the NAACP, which also opposed Title II in joint comments with the Communications Workers of America. The 42 groups parted ways with Wheeler only in urging a faster complaint process for consumers modeled after the Civil Rights Act that was not part of the NPRM, Honig said. “There’s no perfect way to do this,” Honig said of achieving Open Internet regulations, but Wheeler’s approach “came the closest."
Mayors “struggle to find dollars for infrastructure, and I realized early on that most of the money [for investment] is in the private sector,” said Chavez, a Democrat, and former mayor of Albuquerque. “More than anyone else, it’s minorities who stand to lose the most if the FCC overturns the light-touch regulatory approach of Title I,” said TechFreedom President Berin Szoka, who was not involved in the news conference, but opposes (http://bit.ly/WyUdnV) using Title II. “Closing the digital divide requires continued investment, not returning to the antiquated approach of Title II,” he said.
That argument has been strongly contested by Title II opponents, including Free Press, which said in its filing (http://bit.ly/1p8nfnC) and, according to an ex parte filing (see separate report below), told aides to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn that broadband investment thrived in the years following the passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Groups in 2010 had predicted the Open Internet rules passed that year would hurt deployment, Wood said, but that hasn’t happened. “It’s easy to say it’s bad for deployment, but let’s have a conversation about the evidence,” he said.
Representatives of a number of groups, including Jessica Gonzalez, the National Hispanic Media Coalition’s executive vice president-general counsel, met with Wheeler June 27 and argued that Section 706 “seems to exceed the FCC’s capacity, making it unlikely to adequately prevent blocking, paid prioritization and other unreasonable discrimination,” said an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1zYr1G8) detailing the meeting. “If we thought Title II would delay deployment even more, we wouldn’t be supporting it,” Gonzalez told us. Section 706 would not prevent blocking or discrimination and “putting our community in the slow lane,” she said. “If companies haven’t built to our communities, letting them continue to run free without regulations won’t mean they will build out.”