What Survives from the Rosenworcel FCC?

Any time there is a change of administration at the White House the Federal Communications Commission gets a new Chairman and a new agenda—and we now know the new Chairman will be current Commissioner Brandon Carr. With a new Chairman comes new policies, but also a turn against some of the policies of the previous FCC. There are a few things that obviously get reversed. First is net neutrality, which is poorly named and is really an effort to put some regulatory oversight on broadband. It seems likely that Commissioner Carr will reverse Chairman Rosenworcel’s decision on discrimination. Internet service providers (ISPs) were strongly in favor of an intentional discrimination standard, while the FCC instead chose a disparate discrimination standard, which means that discrimination can be proved by seeing the impact of ISP actions on the public. One of the big wins for the Rosenworcel FCC was an emphasis on going after spam robocallers. It’s hard to think this will be reversed, and more likely will be strengthened.