The FCC voted last Thursday to reverse the Net Neutrality order that had been put into place by the previous Tom Wheeler FCC. This action eliminates the use of Title II to regulate broadband. In order to get rid of Title II authority the FCC believes it has to relinquish some of its regulatory role today and to move certain regulatory functions to the Federal Trade Commission. To effectuate this shift the two Commissions have agreed to a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that defines the ongoing regulatory and enforcement responsibility of each agency related to broadband.
The Federal Trade Commission will renew investigating ISPs as they do other large businesses in the country. They will investigate complaints made against the companies for practices that the agency deems to be unfair or deceptive. The agency has undertaken this kind of investigation in the past and has cited and fined a few big ISPs for various deceptive pricing and billing practices. In this role the FTC could elect to tackle topics that were part of net neutrality such as anticompetitive blocking of Internet traffic, throttling customer broadband or paid prioritization practices. While the three legs of net neutrality would not explicitly be part of the FTCs responsibilities, they should be free to investigate practices that harm the public. The FTC would also take back jurisdiction over ISP privacy practices.
It appears that dropping the Title II regulatory regime allows the FTC to again regulate ISPs. Since the FCC approved Title II regulation, the big ISPs have argued that the FTC is prohibited by its charter to regulate common carriers. But since broadband providers are no longer considered to be common carriers it would seem to open the door to the FTC again.
The big difference in a shift to FTC regulation is that anything they do is done retroactively. They look at consumer complaints and then prosecute the worst abuses they find in multiple industries. But their rules often come years after abuse by companies and their rulings only generally affect one company at a time. Other ISPs might shift behavior due to an FTC enforcement action, but they are not required to do so. This is a drastic change from having a set of proactive regulations in rules in place that define acceptable ISP behavior.
The FCC will be giving up most regulatory oversight of broadband. There are still a few broadband rules that fall under FCC jurisdiction. For example, there are still rules in place that require ISPs to disclose information about their products, data speeds, etc., to customers. The FCC will still be monitoring and regulating these notices. There are also regulations that will remain in place because they were put in place by laws that can’t be reversed by the FCC. As an example, the FCC will still oversee CALEA compliance, where ISPs are required to provide access to broadband records to law enforcement.
Probably the biggest regulatory gray area left is cellular broadband. While broadband in general is now largely unregulated there are still numerous regulations about cellular service that remain in place. We’ll have to see how the FCC deals with any conflicts between old cellular rules and their desire to unregulated broadband.
To a large extent there will be little regulation of broadband and it is now an unregulated business line. This is a bit ironic in that broadband has grown to become the most important telecommunications product, while the many regulations on the waning product lines of telephone and cable TV still remain in place.
The FCC acknowledges that its technical staff best understands the ISP industry and has promised in the MOU to make FCC staff available to the FTC as needed. It will be interesting to see how that works in practice since some of the FTC investigations drag on for years. I foresee budgetary issues making major collaboration impractical.
The bottom line is that this MOU makes it clear that broadband is largely deregulated. The FTC can step in and punish ISPs that engage in fraudulent and unfair practices. But otherwise nobody will be monitoring or enforcing any regulations on broadband.