Let the games begin and ex parte filings flow! The FCC formally opened its proceedings yesterday on the classification of broadband Internet. The agency released a 64 page, footnote-chocked Notice of Inquiry, Framework for Broadband Internet Service, to set this round in motion.
The document nicely explains the recent history that led to the agency’s third-way approach and the policy considerations at stake (universal service, privacy, public safety). I reviewed parts of this thing, especially the section covering recent legal history, and it all stands as a sobering reminder of how the FCC (under Chairman Powell) went completely off-course in 2002.
In the FCC’s 2002 Declaratory Ruling that cable modem was an information service, it called broadband cable a “single, integrated service that enables the subscriber to utilize Internet access service,” and that telecommunications component (the transmission part) was “not . . . separable from the data processing capabilities of the service.”
Even in 2002 that clearly wasn’t the case.Continue reading