Regulatory classification

[The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reaffirmed in Charter Advanced Services (MN), LLC v. Lange (in the context of Minnesota’s attempt to regulate interconnected VoIP service) that state efforts to regulate information services are preempted by federal law.]

Congressional and state actions to preserve strong net neutrality protections have bipartisan support—while the Federal Communications Commission’s repeal had bipartisan opposition. Put another way, net neutrality is, and has always been, a bipartisan issue, and more Republicans, in particular, should follow suit. Here’s why:

During his second day of Senate confirmation hearings, Judge Brett Kavanaugh defended his dissent in a federal court decision that upheld the Federal Communications Commission's 2015 net neutrality rules. Pressed by Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) why he disagreed with the rest of his colleagues on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit that the Federal Communications Commission was within its authority to create the rules, Judge Kavanaugh said he was simply following legal precedent and wasn't looking to strip the agency of its power.

Most critiques of the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s nominee to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court, focus on his positions on a woman’s right to choose, his extreme deference to presidential power, or his views on sensible gun laws.

The Senate formally kicks off the confirmation battle over Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh with lawmakers poised to grill the judge for several days on a host of issues. Key among them for the tech and telecom crowd: Kavanaugh’s dissenting opinion in a 2017 ruling that upheld the Obama-era net neutrality rules.

Network neutrality activists are having a field day with the recent report that Verizon “throttled” the mobile data usage of the Santa Clara County Fire Prevention District (FPD). What really happened wasn’t a net neutrality issue: The FPD simply chose a data plan for their mobile command and control unit that was manifestly inappropriate for their needs. The FPD needed a lot of high-speed 4G mobile data — up to 300 GB/month when the device was deployed.

Sen Ed Markey (D-MA), Rep Anna Eshoo (D-CA), 27 senators, and 76 representatives filed an Amicus Brief with the DC Circuit Court of Appeals challenging the Federal Communication Commission’s December 2017 decision to eliminate network neutrality rules. The FCC’s decision repealed the 2015 Open Internet rules, which categorized broadband internet access as a telecommunications service and prohibited Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from engaging in discriminatory practices, such as blocking or throttling online content and establishing internet fast and slow lanes.   

Congress created the Federal Communications Commission in order to ensure we would have working communications infrastructure for, among other things, handling public safety. So you would think that when Verizon throttled the Santa Clara (CA) Fire Department’s mobile broadband connection for coordinating response to the Mendocino Complex Fire — the largest wildfire in California history — that the FCC would naturally be all over it.

A campaign to stop network neutrality rules in California is targeting senior citizens with robocalls claiming that the rules will raise cell phone bills by $30 a month and slow down their data. The robocalls cite no evidence supporting the claim that net neutrality rules will raise cell phone bills and slow down Internet service. The bill in question would impose net neutrality rules in California that are nearly identical to the ones the Federal Communications Commission had on the books between 2015 and 2018.

A coalition of trade groups representing companies including Alphabet, Facebook, and Amazon, urged a US appeals court to reinstate landmark “network neutrality” rules adopted in 2015 to guarantee an open internet. In a legal filing, the Internet Association, Entertainment Software Association, Computer & Communications Industry Association, and Writers Guild of America West urged the reversal of the Federal Communications Commission's decision under Chairman Ajit Pai to overturn the rules in December.