Comcast asks FCC for privilege without responsibility

10 November 2017 by Steve Blum
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Comcast has joined Verizon in pushing the Federal Communications Commission to override state and local laws that might affect their business. In a required notice filed after a private meeting with FCC chair Ajit Pai’s top staffers, a lawyer for Comcast said they urged the FCC to overturn its 2015 decision to regulate broadband as a common carrier service, and to make sure that state and local governments didn’t try to pick up the slack…

At the meeting, we reiterated Comcast’s support for restoring its prior classification of broadband Internet access service (“BIAS”) as an interstate information service and reversing the 2015 decision to classify BIAS as a [common carrier] telecommunications service…

We also emphasized that the Commission’s order in this proceeding should include a clear, affirmative ruling that expressly confirms the primacy of federal law with respect to BIAS as an interstate information service, and that preempts state and local efforts to regulate BIAS either directly or indirectly.

Comcast and Verizon are worried about state initiatives like California’s assembly bill 375, which would have restored consumer privacy rules scrapped at the national level. It was eventually brought down by an all out attack by telecoms lobbyists who control millions of dollars of payments made to legislators in Sacramento. But the effort will, in all likelihood, be made again next year, and Comcast wants to head it off.

But it’s about more than just a few bills. If – when – the current FCC follows through on its promise to scrap broadband’s common carrier status, Internet service providers, like Comcast, will lose their existing exemption from consumer protection laws at both the state and federal level. Although it’s under challenge in a federal appeals court, that exemption basically puts the FCC in charge of regulating most aspects of common carrier telecoms services. Even the Federal Trade Commission can’t set business rules for common carriers.

Comcast likes the advantages, such as immunity from state and federal consumer laws, that come with a common carrier label. But it doesn’t want the common carrier obligations, such as net neutrality rules or FCC oversight, that follow. It would be reckless if the FCC accommodates them.