Coming To Terms With Title II

While extremists on both sides of the debate over whether to reclassify high-speed Internet service under Title II common-carrier regulations traded barbs here last week, the tone at The Cable Show 2010 in Los Angeles was cautiously respectful, even conciliatory. Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski and general counsel Austin Schlick, who both made appearances at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association's annual convention, promised that rate regulation and forcing cable operators to make their networks available to the competition would not be part of any new regime to regulate broadband transmissions under Title II. Even Federal Trade Commission chairman Jon Leibowitz, an avowed advocate of network neutrality, took aim at both the gloom-and-doom and Pollyanna predictions for reclassification. In Washington, both the Democratic chairman and ranking Republican on the House Communications Subcommittee proposed legislative fixes to the problem, but ones that would take very different approaches. In short, it was round two in the Title II fight, with opponents respecting each other's power and strategizing their next moves.