FCC Net Neutrality Order Likely This Week: New Street
The FCC’s net neutrality order will likely circulate this week (see 2403290057), with a 3-2 vote in favor on April 25, New Street’s Blair Levin said Tuesday. The order will largely restore 2015 rules, he said in a note to…
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investors. “Like its predecessors, this policy debate will generate significant headlines and commentary, [but] is unlikely to generate significant changes in how the ISPs operate, nor material changes in their revenues, margins, or opportunities,” Levin said. “Traditional issues of non-discrimination, as well as the key investor concerns about price regulation and unbundling, will largely be treated as they were in 2015,” he added. Whether the FCC will preempt state action remains a question, though that matters less than in the past, he said. The new issue of how 5G network slicing is treated “puts the wireless companies on one side against the cable industry and certain public interest groups on the other,” Levin said: Another concern, the application of Section 214 of the Communications Act to ISPs, “can create some administrative headaches but is unlikely to be material to investors.” Barbara van Schewick, director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, meanwhile, submitted a paper on throttling rules. “The new Open Internet Order needs to clearly prohibit ISPs from speeding up and slowing down applications and classes of applications,” the paper sent to the FCC says: “Neither the 2015 no-throttling rule nor the proposed no-throttling explicitly prohibited ISPs from speeding up an application or class of applications. … Clarifying this in the Order is critically important.” The paper was posted Tuesday in docket 23-320.