The Federal Communications Congress?

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission is considering administratively bypassing Congress and unilaterally reversing longstanding US Internet policy in law with an administrative maneuver that could have sweeping and unintended negative consequences for US trade and foreign policy.

To implement the FCC’s most recent redefinition of net neutrality, the FCC is seriously considering its net neutrality “nuclear option.” That would reverse administratively the legal status of the Internet from a lightly regulated “information service” to a utility price-regulated “Title II telecommunications” service. Rather than asking Congress for Internet authority that the FCC knows that it does not have, it apparently is scheming to creatively combine existing legal authorities, in ways in which they were never intended, in order to ban a two-sided free market for the Internet from developing.

[Cleland is President of Precursor LLC, a research consultancy for Fortune 500 companies, and Chairman of NetCompetition, a pro-competition e-forum supported by broadband interests]