Ruling Backs FCC Rationale for Title I Reclassification Proposal, FSF's Cooper Says
A recent court ruling supports the FCC rationale for proposing to return broadband internet access service to a Title I regulatory classification, said Seth Cooper, Free State Foundation senior fellow, in a Monday blog post. He said the FCC 2015…
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broadband reclassification as a Title II telecom service reached its "strained result" by excluding "Internet access service" from the 1996 Telecom Act's definition of a Title I "information service." A May 8 ruling by Judge Susan Richard Nelson of the U.S. District Court for Minnesota "recognized that an offering’s performance of one function listed under Title I -- transforming -- sufficed to render it an 'information service,'" Cooper wrote, referring to Charter Advanced Services v. Lange, (Case No. 15-cv-3935). The ruling also "emphasized that the information service definition is keyed to the provision of the 'capability' of performing certain functions -- regardless of whether those functions are actually performed in every instance," Cooper wrote. "In Charter Advanced Services v. Lange, it was 'the capability to convert calls' between Internet Protocol (IP) and Time Division Mutiplexing (TDM) that brought Charter Advanced within the meaning of Title I."