Telcos urge FCC not to reclassify Internet services in latest net neutrality skirmish

The biggest telecom companies told the Federal Communications Commission not to change the legal status of broadband Internet services, fearing a raft of new regulation could be on the way.

AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner and Qwest, along with the biggest telecom trade groups in Washington such as CTIA, the National Telecommunications Association and U.S. Telecom Association, vehemently oppose efforts to reclassify broadband from an "information service" to a "telecommunications service."

Doing so, they say in a letter to the agency (PDF), would open up a Pandora's Box that should remain "nailed shut."

The reclassification debate is the latest iteration of the broader battle over net neutrality, which would require Internet service providers to treat all web traffic equally.

Broadband is now classified as an information service, which does not give the FCC much authority to regulate it. The Internet earned this status when the web had much more limited scope and consumer reach.

Because broadband is considered an information service, a federal court has questioned the FCC's ability to order Comcast to change its network management practices. This has thrown the FCC's net neutrality agenda into uncertain territory.

If the FCC reclassifies broadband as a telecommunications service, it would have clear jurisdiction to enact regulations aimed at broadband Internet service providers. It would, therefore, be better equipped to enact net neutrality, a top priority of the Obama administration.

Consumer advocates Free Press and Public Knowledge want to see the FCC follow through with its thoughts of reclassifying broadband as a telecommunications service so the agency has more freedom to oversee a wide range of issues, from consumer privacy to the deployment of new fiber networks.

But the biggest Internet service providers say changing broadband's regulatory status would impose common carrier rules dating back to 1934 on technology that requires a different framework.

They say giving in to the requests of "certain groups advocating an extremist form of 'net neutrality' regulation" would be "a profound mistake with harmful and lasting consequences."

"That classification would inflict burdensome obligations not just on those providers, but on a wide variety of other Internet-based companies that have generally operated outside the Commission's purview," the companies said in the letter to FCC Chair Julius Genachowski.

"It is difficult to imagine a proposal more at odds with the Commission's historical commitment to keeping the Internet unregulated, to our national prospects of economic recovery, and to your own commitment to 'common sense' solutions," they said.