ISPs Push Back on CRA Effort

ISPs pushed back Tuesday (Feb. 27) on the OneMoreVote protest against the network neutrality rules rollback, calling it a "so-called day of action" and branding a Democratic effort to reverse the rollback as a rushed, short-circuited process, though it is a process that ISPs have favored elsewhere.

That came in a statement from Broadband for America, whose members include NCTA, USTelecom and CTIA, together representing the largest ISPs, wired and wireless.

The OneMoreVote protest is looking to get one more Republican vote for a Congressional Review Act resolution to nullify the FCC's Dec. 14 vote to eliminate the rules against blocking, throttling and paid prioritization.

The CRA is likely to be launched Tuesday given that it is the purported day of action, and the fact that publication of the FCC's Restoring Internet Freedom order last week triggered a 60-legislative-day window for passing the CRA.

Broadband for America slammed the CRA as a way for a "simple majority in Congress to unilaterally overturn a federal agency's policies and regulations" using a mechanism that is "essentially writing a law that bypasses debate and utilizes partisan voting procedures, and allows for a rushed, short-circuited approval process, with no public comment or input whatsoever.

Many of the same ISPs were not opposed to Republicans using the same legislative maneuver to overturn the previous Democratic FCC's broadband privacy framework when they thought that should go.

In this case, however, they see the CRA as "a step backward" toward "depression-era rules."

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.