McDowell, Baker, Broadband Providers Criticize FCC Majority On Section 706 Finding

Over strong criticism from broadband Internet service providers and the dissent of the agency's two Republican Commissioners, the FCC has concluded for the first time "that broadband deployment to all Americans is not reasonable and timely."

The report sets the "benchmarking" standard for assessing whether a service qualifies as broadband for the purposes of the report "as a transmission service that actually enables an end user to download content from the Internet at 4 Mbps and to upload such content at 1 Mbps over the broadband provider's network" - which is the threshold speed for broadband universal service support recommended by the FCC's national broadband plan earlier this year.

• Continued -- Subscribers Only
• Non-subscribers -- Sign up for a FREE trial

Legal Implications Of Reclassification Debated

Participants in a July 8 Washington telecom policy event disagreed about whether the broadband legal and investment environment would be more or less "certain" under a Communications Act Title I or Title II regulatory classification of broadband services.

In remarks that opened the event hosted by the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies, center Chief Economist George Ford asserted that light-handed regulation under Title I would be upheld by courts with nearly as much legal certainty as under Title II, but that heavy-handed regulation would be far less certain of being upheld under Title I than under Title II.

• Continued -- Subscribers Only
• Non-subscribers -- Sign up for a FREE trial