Regulatory classification

As the 115th Congress comes to an end, so too has the gambit to invalidate the Federal Communications Commission’s Restoring Internet Freedom Order through the Congressional Review Act (CRA). Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai released the following statement regarding the failure of the effort to use the CRA to overturn the Restoring Internet Freedom Order: “I’m pleased that a strong bipartisan majority of the US House of Representatives declined to reinstate heavy-handed Internet regulation.

Here’s what to expect as the fight over network neutrality enters its next act.

The three-judge panel has been picked to hear the appeal of Mozilla et al. to the Federal Communications Commission's network neutrality deregulation. According to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, the Feb 1 oral argument in the Mozilla appeal will be heard by Judges Judith Rogers, Patricia Millett, and Stephen Williams.

The network neutrality fight will continue playing out in federal court and the states in 2019, against the backdrop of a divided Congress that’s unlikely to settle the debate. The DC Circuit is likely to rule in Mozilla Corp. v. Federal Communications Commission in late spring or summer. The court may decide the fate of the repeal of Obama-era rules, and whether states can enact net neutrality laws in defiance of the FCC. Four states have enacted laws reinstating net neutrality protections since the FCC’s repeal. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai says the state laws are illegal.

AT&T plans to launch its own streaming service in 2019, drawing on content from DC Comics and Harry Potter that was acquired as part of the recent Time Warner deal. But telecommunication companies have a unique advantage: they control the content and the networks that content travels over, presenting a wonderful opportunity to hamstring competitors and unfairly advantage their own services. Heavy-handed tactics like throttling and usage caps would have been blocked by the 2015 network neutrality rules.

It's been one year since the Federal Communications Commission voted to gut its net neutrality rules. The good news is that the internet isn't drastically different than it was before. But that's also the bad news: The net wasn't always so neutral to begin with. Broadband providers didn't make any drastic new moves to block or cripple the delivery of content after the FCC's order.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai would have you believe that the network neutrality repeal was of no consequence — the Internet wasn’t destroyed, cute pictures of cats and dogs are still in abundance, Google and Netflix are alive and well. But even in the short 6 months since the Dec 14, 2017 repeal of the net neutrality rules became effective, we have seen how consumers and competitors lose when broadband providers are given license to self-regulate and the FCC discards its responsibility to oversee the market.

Today we mark a trifecta of governmental malfeasance: last year, the FCC’s majority ignored bipartisan public support for the net neutrality protections the Commission adopted in 2015; it displayed a flawed and factually inaccurate understanding of Internet technology, and it misinterpreted U.S. communications law. Last year, Benton promised that net neutrality was not dead and predicted wins at both ballot boxes and in the courts. In November, the American public overwhelmingly backed candidates that support net neutrality.

Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA) became the latest lawmaker to come out in favor of the discharge petition to bring net neutrality to a vote on to the House floor. The latest pledge comes just a few days after the formal deadline to file the discharge petition elapsed.

Benton Senior Fellow and Public Advocate Gigi Sohn said that the new Democratic-majority House will probe the handling of net neutrality by the Trump administration.  She noted that Democrats are “angry” with the Federal Communications Commission repealing the rules that protected consumers from slowing or blocking internet content.