Public Knowledge Expresses Strong Concerns About Sen. Thune’s Net Neutrality Discussion Draft

After Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) circulated a draft bill that would limit the Federal Communications Commission’s authority over net neutrality, Harold Feld, Senior Vice President of Public Knowledge said, “We appreciate the effort by Senator Thune and his colleagues to engage on these issues by releasing this discussion draft. While this represents a good faith step forward, it also takes several very real steps back from the Commission’s 2010 rules – and certainly does not provide the kind of robust protection consumers need for what the President has rightly called ‘the critical service of the 21st century.’”

More specifically, the discussion draft’s shortcomings include:

• Allows discrimination in violation of the principles of the Open Internet.
• Does not effectively block ‘fast lanes.’
• Consumers lose protections while special interests gain new ones.
• This draft would prevent the FCC from providing more clarity about what behavior runs afoul of the stated Internet openness principles.
• This draft would undo nearly five years of work on universal service reform based on Section 706 authority, seriously disrupting efforts to provide broadband to rural areas.
• It would eliminate the FCC’s authority to preempt limits on community broadband.
• It could have serious unintended impacts on voice-over-IP services, placing the stability of the 9-1-1 system at risk and interfering with the FCC’s efforts to resolve rural call completion.
• It could also limit the FCC’s authority to promote access by the disabled to communications services, protect consumer privacy, promote broadband deployment by ensuring that new competitors have access to utility poles and rights of way.