ISP lobbies sue to stop CA net neutrality law

Entire broadband industry sues California to stop net neutrality law | Ars Technica - Jon Brodkin:

October 3, 2018 - "Four lobby groups representing the broadband industry today sued California to stop the state's new net neutrality law.

"The lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the Eastern District of California by mobile industry lobby CTIA, cable industry lobby NCTA, telco lobby USTelecom, and the American Cable Association, which represents small and mid-size cable companies. Together, these four lobby groups represent all the biggest mobile and home Internet providers in the US and hundreds of smaller ISPs. Comcast, Charter, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile US, Sprint, Cox, Frontier, and CenturyLink are among the groups' members.

"'This case presents a classic example of unconstitutional state regulation,' the complaint said. The California net neutrality law 'was purposefully intended to countermand and undermine federal law by imposing on [broadband] the very same regulations that the Federal Communications Commission [FCC] expressly repealed in its 2018 Restoring Internet Freedom Order.'

"ISPs say the California law impermissibly regulates interstate commerce. '[I]t is impossible or impracticable for an Internet service provider offering [broadband] to distinguish traffic that moves only within California from traffic that crosses state borders,' the lobby groups' complaint said.... The groups asked the court to declare that the state law 'is preempted and unconstitutional, and should permanently enjoin [California] from enforcing or giving effect to it.'

"California now faces two major lawsuits challenging the net neutrality law signed by Governor Jerry Brown on Sunday. The Trump administration's Department of Justice also sued California and is seeking a preliminary injunction that would stop the law from being implemented. California's net neutrality rules are scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2019.

"Ultimately, the question of whether the FCC's preemption of state laws is valid will be decided in a different lawsuit pending at the US Court of Appeals for District of Columbia Circuit. In that suit, state attorneys general and other litigants sued the FCC in order to reverse the repeal of federal net neutrality rules and the preemption of state laws.

"But the US District Court in California ... will decide whether California can enforce its law while the US Court of Appeals case is pending."

Read more: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/10/entire-broadband-industry-sues-california-to-stop-net-neutrality-law/
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FCC to vote on 'net neutrality' repeal

Ajit Pai: ‘We Are Returning to the Original Classification of the Internet’ - Hit & Run - Reason.com - Matt Welch:

November 21, 2017 - "Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Ajit Pai announced this morning that he is submitting a proposal to repeal what he characterized as the "heavy-handed, utility-style regulation" of Internet companies adopted by the Obama administration in 2015.

 "Colloquially (if misleadingly) known as 'net neutrality' ... the rules, which included classifying Internet companies as 'telecommunications services' under Title II of the 1934 Telecommunications Act instead of as 'information services' under Title I, were intended by advocates to be a bulwark against private companies discriminating against disfavored service or content providers. In practice, Pai asserted today in a statement, net neutrality 'depressed investment in building and expanding broadband networks and deterred innovation,' and amounted to 'the federal government ... micromanaging the Internet.' The measure will be voted on next month....

" Pai came on the latest installment of the Fifth Column podcast to explain and debate the announcement with Kmele Foster and myself....

Pai: Sure, so I'm proposing to my fellow commissioners at the FCC to return to the bipartisan consensus on how to think about the Internet. And so instead of putting the government in control of how it operates and how it's managed, we're going to return to the light-touch framework that was established during the Clinton administration.... Essentially, we are returning to the original classification of the Internet....

[S]tarting with the commercialization of the Internet in the 1990s all the way until 2015, we thought of Internet access as what's called an 'information service.'....It meant that the FCC would not micromanage how it developed, how it operated. We would let the market develop, and then take targeted action if necessary to protect consumers.

In 2015, that changed, and we switched to calling it a 'telecommunication service,' essentially treating every Internet Service Provider in the country, from the big ones all the way down to the mom-and-pop fixed wireless providers in Montana, as anti-competitive monopolists to be regulated under 1934 rules that were developed for Ma Bell, the old telephone monopoly.

And so we are simply returning that classification back to the information-service one that started under President Clinton. And additionally, we are getting rid of some of the regulations that were adopted under that so-called Title II 'common carrier' classification, in terms of the various … rules that were adopted back in 2015."

Read more: http://reason.com/blog/2017/11/21/ajit-pai-we-are-returning-to-the-origina

FCC chair to roll back net neutrality regulations

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai on Why He's Rejecting Net Neutrality Rules - Reason.com - Nick Gillespie & Mark McDaniel:

April 26, 2017 - "Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai announced plans today to roll back net neutrality rules put in place by the Obama administration in 2015.

"The FCC currently regulates Internet service providers (ISPs) under Title II regulations that essentially treat the internet as a public utility similar to the old phone monopoly. Proponents of net neutrality and the invocation of Title II regulations say that such oversight is necessary to ensure that the Internet remains 'open' and ISPs don't block sites or degrade offerings by rivals. Long a critic of Title II regulations, which were invoked after the FCC lost two court battles to regulate the Internet, Pai describes them as 'a panoply of heavy-handed economic regulations that were developed in the Great Depression to handle Ma Bell.'

"Scrapping these rules, Pai told Reason's Nick Gillespie, won't harm consumers or the public interest because there was no reason for them in the first place. The rationales were mere 'phantoms that were conjured up by people who wanted the FCC for political reasons to overregulate the internet,' Pai told Gillespie. 'We were not living in a digital dystopia in the years leading up to 2015.'

"If left in place, however, the Title II rules could harm the commercial internet, which Pai described as 'one of the most incredible free market innovations in history.'

"'Companies like Google and Facebook and Netflix became household names precisely because we didn't have the government micromanaging how the internet would operate,' said Pai, who noted that the Clinton-era decision not to regulate the Internet like a phone utility or a broadcast network was one of the most important factors in the rise of our new economy."

Read more: http://reason.com/reasontv/2017/04/26/fcc-ajit-pai-net-neutrality-internet
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