CTIA Seeking Full Court Review of Title II Decision

CTIA: The Wireless Association, which represents wireless Internet service providers, will seek an en banc (full court) rehearing of the three-judge panel decision upholding the Federal Communications Commission's Open Internet order reclassifying fixed and mobile broadband as telecommunications services subject to Title II common carrier regulations, apparently. The deadline for seeking that hearing from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is July 28, 45 days after the initial decision June 14. CTIA will, not surprisingly, focus on the wireless portion of that decision—the FCC for the first time said its network neutrality rules applied to wireless as well as wired broadband.

Much to CTIA's dismay, the three-judge panel said the FCC had the statutory authority to make that call. “The Commission permissibly found that mobile broadband like all broadband—is a telecommunications service subject to common carrier regulation under Title II of the Communications Act,” the three-judge panel said. The FCC initially classified mobile broadband as a private radio service back in 2007, the court pointed out, considering it a “nascent” service rather than one reaching a substantial portion of the public, which would make it a commercial mobile service subject to common carrier regulations. But this time around the FCC said that with hundreds of millions now using mobile to access the Internet, it was a commercial service and should be classified as such. The court agreed. CTIA argues that mobile is qualitatively different from fixed, something the FCC has previously acknowledge, and requires "far more complex and aggressive network management than fixed broadband requires," which is why it says the FCC was wrong to apply the same regulations to both.