Republican senators not happy with FCC's "Third Way"

Senate Republicans voiced their displeasure Monday with the Federal Communications Commission's plans to reclassify broadband Internet access as a telecom service.

Thirty-seven Republican Senators signed a letter to FCC chairman Julius Genachowski decrying his "third-way" plan for regulating broadband access, arguing the approach would discourage private investment and harm consumers. In the letter the Senators reject the FCC's basis for reclassifying broadband as a telecom service and claim that doing so would not increase broadband deployment as promised. The letter states that rather than relying on fact-based analysis as promised, the FCC's efforts "appear to be solely relying on the unsubstantiated fear that broadband service providers may harm consumers at some future date." It also charges the FCC with "operating under the misguided notion that there is a lack of competition among broadband service providers."