Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, told the FCC he...
Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, told the FCC he wants it to craft net neutrality rules under its Communications Act Title II authority, reclassifying broadband as a telecom service. Several prominent Democrats have backed Title II reclassification (CD Sept 10 p5),…
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which congressional Republicans and industry stakeholders have resisted. “The FCC should protect access to the Internet under a Title II framework, with appropriate forbearance, thereby ensuring greater regulatory and market certainty for users and broadband providers,” King told FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in a letter Wednesday. “To ensure that the Internet fulfills its promise of being a powerful, open platform for social, political, and economic life, the FCC must adopt a rule against blocking, a bright-line rule against application-specific discrimination, and a rule banning access fees.” Protections should apply at points of interconnection, King said, urging the agency to “abandon its current proposal.” Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., another backer of Title II reclassification, meanwhile, allied himself “in solidarity with netizens everywhere” in participating with online protests in favor of net neutrality rules. (See separate report above in this issue.) His website featured a loading symbol, as did many other sites, as “a harbinger of the dark days ahead if we let the broadband behemoths win,” Markey said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “Net neutrality is as basic to the functioning of the Internet as nondiscrimination is to the United States Constitution.”