Industry Letter Calls Reclassification Supporters ‘Alarmists’

AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner and the major telecom and cable trade associations threw their weight behind a joint letter Thursday asking the FCC not to reclassify broadband as a Title II service. The letter accuses supporters of the idea of changing how broadband is classified of “alarmist rhetoric” in their arguments that the Comcast decision leaves the FCC “unable to implement the National Broadband Plan” or preserve net neutrality.

"Because the proponents of Internet regulation continue to mislead the Commission, Congress and the public about ‘reclassification,’ … we take this opportunity to set the record straight,” the letter says. “The Commission has never classified any kind of Internet access service (wireline, cable, wireless, powerline, dial-up or otherwise) as a Title II telecommunications service, nor has it ever regulated the rates, terms and conditions of that service -- Internet access service has always been treated as a Title I information service.”

The letter questions whether a move to change the classification of broadband would survive legal challenge. “The Commission is not free to change that classification simply because some parties might now prefer a different outcome,” it said. “Any assertions to the contrary misstate regulatory history, misread the law and ignore many of the necessary byproducts of any such reclassification."

The FCC’s position has been clear since a “seminal” 1998 report to Congress that the commission sent when William Kennard was the chairman, the letter says. “The Commission began by examining the relevant statutory terms ’telecommunications service’ and ‘information service’ and concluded that the two terms are ‘mutually exclusive,’ in that an integrated information service cannot simultaneously be said to contain a ’telecommunications service,’ even though it has ’telecommunications’ components.” CTIA, USTelecom, NCTA, TIA and the Independent Telephone and Communications Alliance signed the letter.

Public Knowledge Legal Director Harold Feld called the letter “yet another sign that the industry will make any argument to avoid the simple fact that consumers deserve protection against companies [that] block or degrade service and deserve more competition in Internet services.” Public Knowledge said it has demonstrated the companies are “wrong again on the facts, wrong again on the history, wrong on the policy. … To give one example the 1998 FCC report they mention would indeed call broadband service an information service, but only if the companies offering it are not eligible to receive universal service support.”