Cable Internet Service Providers Look To Shape Expected Return of FCC’s Net Neutrality Rules

Likely seeing the re-regulatory handwriting on the wall, cable internet service providers have told the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) just how it should reclassify broadband as a Title II service and what it should and shouldn’t do when it reimposes new net neutrality rules, as it is expected to do after a suitable timespan following the public comment period on its reclassification proposal. NCTA – The Internet & Television Association, joined by over a half-dozen state associations, said if the FCC goes ahead with the plan, it should do the following:

1. Provide exceptions for reasonable network management;
2. Permit usage-based billing and zero-rating;
3. Refrain from extending those rules to non-BIAS [broadband internet access service] data services or internet interconnection and traffic exchange arrangements;
4. Avoid drawing “unwarranted” distinctions between broadband technologies (as in, apply it to wireless, fixed wireless, satellite-delivered broadband or any other broadband delivery technology).
5. Forbear from all Title II provisions that would authorize the FCC to regulate rates and mandate unbundling, as well as from other “burdensome and ill-fitting” provisions of Title II.
6. Preempt state and local regulation of broadband services and reject proposals to deem any federal framework as merely a “floor,” “as such an approach would only invite states and localities to attempt to override federal policy determinations.”