The recent ruling earlier this week by the US Court of Appeals for the 9^th Circuit highlights the current weak state of regulations over broadband. The case is one that’s been around for years and stems from AT&T’s attempt to drive customers off of their original unlimited cellphone data plans. AT&T began throttling unlimited customers when they reached some unpublished threshold of data use, in some cases as small as 2 GB in a month. AT&T then lied to the FCC about the practice when they inquired. This case allows the FTC suit against AT&T to continue.

The ruling demonstrates that the FTC has some limited jurisdiction over common carriers like AT&T. However, the clincher came when the court ruled that the FTC only has jurisdiction over issues where the carriers aren’t engaging in common-carrier services. This particular case involves AT&T not delivering a product they promised to customers and thus falls under FTC jurisdiction. But the court made it clear that future cases that involve direct common carrier functions, such as abuse of net neutrality would not fall under the FTC.

This case clarifies the limited FTCs jurisdiction over ISPs and contradicts the FCC’s statements that the FTC is going to be able to step in and take their place on most matters involving broadband. The court has made it clear that is not the case. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai praised this court ruling and cited it as a good example of how the transition of jurisdiction to the FTC is going to work as promised. But in looking at the details of the ruling, that is not true.

This court ruling makes it clear that there is no regulatory body now in charge of direct common carrier issues. For instance, if Netflix and one of the ISPs get into a big fight about paid prioritization there would be nowhere for Netflix to turn. The FCC would refuse to hear the case. The FTC wouldn’t be able to take the case since it involves a common carrier issue. And while a court might take the case, they would have no basis on which to make a ruling. As long as the ISP didn’t break any other kinds of laws, such as reneging on a contract, a court would have no legal basis on which to rule for or against the ISPs behavior.

That means not only that broadband is now unregulated, it also means that there is no place for some body to complain against abuse by ISPs until the point where that abuse violates some existing law. That is the purest definition of limbo that I can think of for the industry.

To make matters worse, even this jumbled state of regulation is likely to more muddled soon by the courts involved in the various net neutrality suits. Numerous states have sued the FCC for various reasons, and if past practice holds, the courts are liable to put some or all of the FCC’s net neutrality decision on hold.

It’s hard to fathom what that might mean. For example, if the courts were to put the FCC’s decision to cancel Title II regulation on hold, then that would mean that Title II regulation would still be the law of the land until the net neutrality lawsuits are finally settled. But this FCC has made it clear that they don’t want to regulate broadband and they would likely ignore such a ruling in practice. The Commission has always had the authority to pick and choose cases it will accept and I’m picturing that they would refuse to accept cases that relied on their Title II regulation authority.

That would be even muddier for the industry than today’s situation. Back to the Netflix example, if Title II regulation was back in effect and yet the FCC refused to pursue a complaint from Netflix, then Netflix would likely be precluded from trying to take the issue to court. The Netflix complaint would just sit unanswered at the FCC, giving Netflix no possible remedy, or even a hearing about their issues.

The real issue that is gumming up broadband regulation is not the end of Title II regulation. The move to Title II regulation just became effective with the recent net neutrality decision and the FCCs before that had no problem tackling broadband issues. The real problem is that this FCC is washing their hands of broadband regulation, and supposedly tossed that authority to the FTC – something the court just made clear can’t work in the majority of cases.

This FCC has shown that there is a flaw in their mandate from Congress in that they feel they are not obligated to regulate broadband. So I guess the only fix will be if Congress makes the FCC’s jurisdiction, or lack of jurisdiction clear. Otherwise, we couldn’t even trust a future FCC to reverse course, because it’s now clear that the decision to regulate or not regulate broadband is up to the FCC and nobody else. The absolute worst long-term outcome would be future FCCs regulating or not regulating depending upon changes in the administration.

My guess is that AT&T and the other big ISPs are going to eventually come to regret where they have pushed this FCC. There are going to be future disputes between carriers and the ISPs are going to find that the FCC can not help them just like they can’t help anybody complaining against them. That’s a void that is going to serve this industry poorly.