Proposed Net Neutrality Rules Show FCC Willing to Gamble It Can Find a Friendly Court, Furchtgott-Roth Says
As the FCC moves forward on net neutrality rules, it needs to keep in mind the language of the Telecom Act of 1996 and not twist those words, which he believes the commission has in too many other areas, former Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth said Friday during a panel at the FCC Consumer Advisory Committee meeting. Furchtgott-Roth suggested a federal court will reject revised rules -- which was the fate of most of the 2010 net neutrality rules (CD Jan 15 p1).
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
Furchtgott-Roth, a Republican, reminded the audience he’s also former chief economist of the House Commerce Committee. “Vast sections” of the Telecom Act “have been hollowed out of any meaning by years of commission rules and practice” with “little or any foundation in statute,” he said.
The Telecom Act took years to write, but the language is too often ignored by the FCC, Furchtgott-Roth said. “The search for good policy has trumped adherence to the law,” he charged. Members of Congress are perpetually disappointed with the FCC, he said. “Being a member of Congress has little meaning if laws can mean whatever an agency wills them to mean,” he said. Net neutrality is poised to be “just another example” of the FCC ignoring the language of the Telecom Act, he said: The FCC appears intent on engaging in “the casino form of government,” based on the gamble that “some court, somewhere, will let it happen.” Furchtgott-Roth is now at the Hudson Institute.
"History did not start and progress did not stop with the passage of the 1996 act,” replied Mark Cooper, research director of the Consumer Federation of America, also on the panel. The dominant incumbents remain dominant when it comes to the last mile of service, Cooper said. ISPs can “impose counterproductive worry about protocols and devices, what are they going to let me use,” he said. They can “undermine interoperability” or “chill innovation.”
Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld agreed with Furchtgott-Roth that the FCC “has far too often pursued clever policy,” rather than following the law. But Feld also said the agency has plenty of authority to reclassify broadband as a Title II service, subject to greater controls. “For consumers the reliability and the dependability” that would come with reclassification “remain critically important,” he said.