The National Cable and Telecommunications Association has threatened to sue the FCC based on its chairman’s proposed Title II plans. This is not a surprise to anyone keeping track of public opposition, but FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler will be looking to avoid another repeat at the hands of the US courts.
The NCTA’s president Michael Powell, speaking to C-SPAN, said that the proposed Title II regulation would be a dramatic shift for an industry that was used to light-touch regulation. Powell also believed that President Obama’s intervention, asking the FCC for Title II regulation of the ISPs, has turned the issue into a Republican vs. Democrat battleground.
Calling for pre-publication of Wheeler’s proposal, Powell wants to let loose the baying of the wider US broadband industry. Currently, Commissioner Ajit Pai has been the most vocal critic of Wheeler’s approach, but only because he has seen the document with his own eyes. Pai appears to be leaning towards the Republican side of the debate, which leaves Wheeler holding the Democrat side of things.
The FCC is expected to vote on the matter on February 26th, with the word on the street saying Wheeler has enough votes to pass it – at least 3 of the total 5. In his interview, Powell notes that in the years since he first came up with the basic principles of net neutrality as a previous FCC Chairman back in 2005, “with each successive commission there seemed to be an upping of the ante to prove that you were more committed to net neutrality than the previous one.”
It won’t raise any eyebrows that the cable and telco lobbying body is threatening to litigate, but it is worth noting that this side of the debate, which seems to be losing the war of words in the wider press, raises valid points regarding the legal validity and authority of the FCC to grant Title II reclassification.
Whether a court agrees with the FCC will decide Wheeler’s fate. The FCC was pretty confident in itself before it was overturned in the Verizon case, and Powell is warning that reclassifying ISPs under the common carrier rules will be a “fatal step.”
“I think it’s just too dramatic, too serious a change not to ask the court to review the proprietary of what the commission did, particularly when so much of it rests on whether it had the authority to do it in the first place,” said Powell.