Net Neutrality Likely to End Up in Court — Again

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FCC Chairman Ajit Pai explained how rolling back so-called “Net Neutrality” rules will impact internet service providers and consumers. He plans to do that in a vote on December 14, Inside Towers reported. The details of the plan were revealed last Wednesday. Here’s the official FCC version, and this is Commissioner Mignon Clyburn’s “factsheet.”

We are getting government out of the business of regulating how the internet works, and we’re going to return to the market-based approach that served us well for two decades, and we’re going to let this online platform be governed by engineers and entrepreneurs instead of bureaucrats and lawyers here in Washington,” he told Fox News.

Opponents of the plan to roll back the 2015 rules that re-classified the internet so it’s regulated like a utility rather than a communications service like Amazon and Google, are likely to fight the presumed December vote in court, reports Politico. A federal appeals court upheld the current rules in 2016, going against a challenge from AT&T, USTelecom and other industry trade groups.

The December “action will return broadband in the U.S. to a regulatory regime that emphasizes private investment and innovation over lumbering government intervention,” Joan Marsh, a vice president at AT&T, told the New York Times. The action “represents the end of net neutrality as we know it and defies the will of millions of Americans,” stated Michael Beckerman, chief executive of the Internet Association, a lobbying group that represents tech companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon.

November 27, 2017               

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