The chairman said he’s only asking for comments, and he’ll get plenty of them. Before the formal filing process even got underway, ISPs and their allies in Washington blasted the FCC’s proposal to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service in an effort to clarify its regulatory authority over the sector.
They blasted the commission for embarking on what they view as a dangerous path toward overregulation, with the inevitable result of curbing investment and eliminating jobs. Broadband policy, they argue, is properly the responsibility of Congress. Enterprise Networking Today reports on the fallout.
Internet service providers, their trade associations and other Washington supporters wasted no time in lashing out at the Federal Communications Commission’s decision this week to begin the process of reclassifying broadband as a telecommunications service, a move regulators said was necessary to clarify the commission’s oversight authority in the Internet services sector.
Perhaps no one put it more bluntly than Verizon Executive Vice President Tom Tauke, a former congressman who has been lobbying lawmakers to rewrite telecommunications law to conform to modern broadband service.
