Genachowski to Unveil Net Neutrality Rulemaking Notice
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski plans a rulemaking notice about adding a fifth principle, this one on nondiscrimination, to the commission’s Internet policy statement, officials said. The details are sketchy, and Genachowski’s office declined to comment. At least two other eighth-floor offices hadn’t been notified before the news leaked. Genachowski plans to make the announcement at a Brookings Institution conference on Monday, the day that Commissioner Meredith Baker is running a broadband-plan field hearing in Austin.
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Two commissioners’ offices didn’t get a heads up until after 2 p.m. Friday, when the first news reports broke and lobbyists started calling, eighth-floor officials said. And officials said the offices still hadn’t received details. The news came a day after an FCC oversight hearing at which House Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., endorsed a net-neutrality bill and Genachowski affirmed his support for strong neutrality protections.
The surprise notice comes after an exchange between Genachowski and Commissioner Robert McDowell about overhauling the FCC (CD July 22 p1). “No commissioner should learn of official actions through the trade press,” McDowell wrote the chairman in July. “An effective FCC would be one where, for instance, Commissioner offices would receive options memoranda and briefing materials long before votes need to be cast.” At the oversight hearing, ranking member Joe Barton of Texas urged Genachowski to adopt principles of FCC reform contained in a bill Barton has introduced.
The rulemaking notice “would solidify the agency’s basis for broadly applying net neutrality, would extend the duties to wireless networks, and likely would expressly include a ‘nondiscrimination’ element,” Stifel Nicolaus said in a note Friday. “If the FCC adopts rules and is not overturned, cable, telco, and wireless operators would not be able to do some things they may have liked to do in order to maximize revenue, but we have already been headed in that direction for some time now.”
“It is a mistake for the chairman to propose common carrier-type regulation in the broadband world,” in light of healthy broadband competition and the “few isolated” complaints about neutrality abuses, said Free State Foundation President Randolph May. “This is especially true right in the midst of the development of the broadband plan in which the evidence almost certainly will show such common carrier-type regulation is not needed and could be very harmful to broadband investment.”
Public Knowledge said the expected rulemaking notice is “years past due.” Rules “will bring a degree of certainty that will help both carriers and consumers alike,” said President Gigi Sohn. “Carriers will know what is allowed and what is not; consumers will be relieved to know they will be able to have access to any content and service on a non-discriminatory basis.” Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott said his group will “reserve full judgment until we know all the details, but we are very pleased to see the FCC protecting the open Internet’s free market for speech and commerce.”