Cable ISPs seek to influence FCC’s expected return of net neutrality rule

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:

• Provide exceptions for reasonable network management
• Permit usage-based billing and zero-rating
  Refrain from extending those rules to non-BIAS [broadband internet access service] data services or internet interconnection and traffic exchange arrangements
• Avoid drawing “unwarranted” distinctions between broadband technologies (as in, apply it to wireless, fixed wireless, satellite-delivered broadband or any other broadband delivery technology).
• 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.
• 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.”

Benton