The Truth Behind the Doublespeak on Internet Rate Regulation

[Commentary] Republicans on the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology are marking up that says little more than this: The Federal Communications Commission may not regulate the rates companies like Comcast charge for broadband Internet access. Why is the legislation needed when there’s practically no difference in the top-level talking points that both sides use when it comes to letting market forces determine the rates most Internet users pay for access.

But there are meaningful differences between the rate-setting power Congress granted the FCC in the laws on the books today—which are the same ones that Chairman Wheeler and the FCC have already chosen not to use—and the consumer-protection authority the newly proposed bill endangers. The FCC’s 2015 Open Internet Order treats broadband like a communications service as Congress always intended—instead of treating it like a website for regulatory purposes. Contrary to the fibs and fabrications some lobbyists and lawmakers favor, this is exactly the right dividing line. The FCC has no business (and no authority for) regulating Internet content, but it does have a congressional mandate to ensure we have world-class broadband communications networks. The FCC’s reclassification of broadband provides a deregulatory, flexible and technology-neutral framework: it preserves absolutely essential principles, like the guarantees of universal, affordable, reasonable and nondiscriminatory telecommunications services. But the bill under consideration now endangers those very same principles. It doesn’t just take rate setting off the table, or cement in a new statute what the FCC has already decided to do by forbearing from Sections 203 and 205. It would prevent the FCC from assessing entire categories of unfair broadband-provider practices.

[Wood is the policy director for the Free Press Action Fund]