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April 2017

FCC Commissioner Clyburn blasts network neutrality repeal

Federal Communications Commissioner Mignon Clyburn blasted FCC Chairman Ajit Pai for launching an attack on network neutrality.

Commissioner Clyburn said the plan will result in a regulatory oversight vacuum over internet service providers. “They’re willing to dismantle a carefully struck balance that has served us well, and grant the wishes of a handful of broadband providers that soon will have the right to police themselves when it comes to consumer rights,” she said. “The FCC must never take a backseat while the nation’s broadband providers are calling all the shots.”

Trump’s FCC chairman wants to hand the Internet over to big corporations

[Commentary] For as long as the Internet has existed, it has been grounded on the principle of net neutrality — that what you read, see or watch online shouldn’t be favored, blocked or slowed down based on where that content is coming from.

Net neutrality means that cable companies can’t reserve the fastest Internet speeds for the biggest companies and leave everyone else in the slow lane. That’s what ensures a website for a local pizza place in rural Oregon or Minnesota loads as quickly as the website for Pizza Hut or Domino’s. Or why a social network built in a garage is available to the same people as Instagram or Twitter. That’s why it’s so alarming to see that the Federal Communications Commission, a federal agency that’s expected to help protect the Internet, is planning to roll back net neutrality rules. It’s amazing that President Donald Trump, having promised to stand up to the powerful on behalf of ordinary Americans, now has an FCC that gives the powerful what they ask for — even if it hurts consumers.

[Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, and Al Franken, a Democrat from Minnesota, are members of the U.S. Senate. Tom Wheeler was FCC chairman from 2013 to January.]

The Future of Internet Freedom

Earlier today, I shared with my fellow Commissioners a proposal to reverse the mistake of Title II and return to the light-touch regulatory framework that served our nation so well during the Clinton Administration, the Bush Administration, and the first six years of the Obama Administration. The document that we will be voting on at the FCC’s May meeting is called a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. If it is adopted, the FCC will seek public input on this proposal. In other words, this will be the beginning of the discussion, not the end. Now, some have called on the FCC to reverse Title II immediately, through what is known as a Declaratory Ruling. But I don’t believe that is the right path forward. This decision should be made through an open and transparent process in which every American can share his or her views.

So what are the basic elements of this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking?
First, we are proposing to return the classification of broadband service from a Title II telecommunications service to a Title I information service—that is, light-touch regulation drawn from the Clinton Administration. As I mentioned earlier, this Title I classification was expressly upheld by the Supreme Court in 2005, and it’s more consistent with the facts and the law.
Second, we are proposing to eliminate the so-called Internet conduct standard. This 2015 rule gives the FCC a roving mandate to micromanage the Internet.
Third, we are seeking comment on how we should approach the so-called bright-line rules adopted in 2015.

FCC Commissioner O'Rielly on the Future of Internet Regulation

Today, my colleague and I announce the beginning of a process to free the Internet from the terrible restraints of common carrier regulation now imposed on America’s broadband providers. After almost two years of experience, it is clear that this archaic regime never should have been imposed in the first place.

Based on hyperbole, rent seeking, imaginary problems and liberal ideology, the previous FCC took Internet policy down into a dark and horrible abyss. Well, we are here to declare that those days are over; we are bringing sanity and evidence-based decision-making back to the Commission’s rules. In releasing a new Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the Commission initiates the necessary procedures to expunge net neutrality regulations from the Internet. Following a methodical and transparent path, which I commend the Chairman for pursuing, will help prevent opponents from complaining about procedural shortcuts and the like. Instead, we will follow the Administrative Procedure Act to the letter of the law. Hopefully, over the course of the next few months, we can move forward to a final order.

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