Mozilla, FCC Talk Hybrid Net Neutrality Approach

Mozilla executives have met twice with Federal Communications Commission General Counsel Jonathan Sallet in the past two weeks to talk about its proposal to create a hybrid Title II/Sec 706 approach to legally sustain new Open Internet rules.

Mozilla has suggested that the FCC treat ISPs’ connection for an implied fee of a remote end point (remote edge provider, or REP) to an individual subscriber as a Title II telecommunications service, and its connection for a fee to end users of all those REP's as a Sec 706 information service. Under that regime, it suggests, the FCC could prevent blocking or throttling in the relationship between ISP's and edge providers under Title II, and prevent anti-competitive paid priority on the last-mile, consumer facing side under Sec. 706 by presuming paid priority to be a violation of the anti-unreasonable discrimination rule, but making it a rebuttable presumption with a high bar.