FCC Commissioner Clyburn Seeks Balance Between Strong Net Neutrality Rules, "Clarity" for Investors

Commissioner Mignon Clyburn of the Federal Communications Commission has asked FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to eliminate from new network neutrality rules a new legal category of “broadband subscriber access services,” which was created as an additional point of legal authority for the FCC to monitor the ways that companies hand off traffic on the back end of the Internet.

Those deals, known as “interconnection” arrangements, became a point of contention when Netflix accused Comcast and other companies of erecting “Internet tolls” before easily passing Web traffic from one network to another.

The initial plan sought by Chairman Wheeler would allow the FCC to investigate and take action against deals that are “not just and reasonable,” according to a fact sheet released by the FCC.

Eliminating the new legal category could make it trickier for the FCC to police those arrangements, said the FCC officials. Other FCC officials have previously said that the broader act of reclassifying broadband Internet service would, in and of itself, give the commission enough powers to oversee interconnection deals.

Clyburn’s changes also would replace a new standard for Internet service providers’ conduct, which was meant to act as a catchall rule for any future behavior that might abuse consumers. That standard would be swapped out with potentially narrower language from 2010 net neutrality rules that prevented “unreasonable discrimination.”

In a speech at the Federal Communications Bar Association, Commissioner Clyburn said that she was “pleased” with the initial draft but also hinted that she might need some fixes to strike that balance between “strong” protections for consumers and “clarity” for investors.

“Some have expressed concerns about allowing private rights of action in court, failing to consider the impact on smaller [Internet service providers], that including interconnection goes too far or that the case-by-case approach does not go far enough and that the new conduct rule may not be as strong as the previous unreasonable discrimination rule,” she said.