FCC Caves to Liberal Special Interests, Moves to Reclassify Broadband

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) acknowledged Thursday it would launch a tough internet regulatory campaign aimed at reclassifying broadband lines under decades-old rules crafted for traditional phone networks, signaling a stark departure from the trial balloon some commissioners floated the same week that federal regulators would administer the Internet through the existing framework.

The suggestion, first reported Sunday by the Washington Post, that the Commission might forgo President Barack Obama’s goal of adopting so-called network neutrality rules triggered a firestorm among progressives and liberal special interests, who complained the Administration had caved in the face of broad public skepticism and intense business opposition.

In the wake of an appeals court ruling last month that demonstrated that the scope of the FCC’s regulatory control with regard to internet services was much more limited than the agency has argued, proponents of net neutrality demanded the FCC reclassify broadband as a Title II telecommunications service–a framework developed in the 1930s to regulate phone service–so that it fall within the preview of federal regulators.

In a memo to clients, Stanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffet wrote Wednesday the move to reclassify promises to have a “profoundly negative impact on capital investment.”

Still, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski was said to have dispatched senior aides to inform fellow commissioners that he “will seek to restore the status quo as it existed,” indicating the agency is undeterred and principally concerned with the end-goal of net neutrality adoption.

Hill whisperers say the Commission will reclassify broadband under a procedure known as forbearance, through which it would selectively administer elements of Title II to broadband. It is expected Genachowski will opt for measures regulating broadband rates and open service requirements for Internet providers — both of which would effectively lay the foundation for a new, more-regulated broadband framework.

“The legal basis for reclassification remains uncertain,” said Bernstein, “as does the permissibility of the FCC’s plans to forbear from exercising the power under Title II on the vast majority of regulations.”

The period for public comment on the Commission’s proposed net neutrality rules expired only last week, prompting one source to ask: “How did Genachowski process in such a short period the surely-overwhelming sum of comments? With Thursday’s overreach we’re at least now clear that the FCC is primarily concerned with delivering on the goals of liberal special interests, as opposed to serving the public at large.”