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FCC Tells Court it has no "Legal Authority" to Impose Net Neutrality Rules:
FCC defends repeal in court, claims broadband isn't "telecommunications."
The Federal Communications Commission opened its defense of its net neutrality repeal yesterday, telling a court that it has no authority to keep the net neutrality rules in place.
Chairman Ajit Pai's FCC argued that broadband is not a "telecommunications service" as defined in federal law, and therefore it must be classified as an information service instead. As an information service, broadband cannot be subject to common carrier regulations such as net neutrality rules, Pai's FCC said. The FCC is only allowed to impose common carrier regulations on telecommunications services.
"Given these classification decisions, the Commission determined that the Communications Act does not endow it with legal authority to retain the former conduct rules," the FCC said in a summary of its defense [pdf] filed yesterday in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The FCC is defending the net neutrality repeal against a lawsuit filed by more than 20 state attorneys general, consumer advocacy groups, and tech companies. The FCC's opponents in the case will file reply briefs next month, and oral arguments are scheduled for February.
Then why not let the states implement it?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 14 2018, @03:31PM
I very much bet that the FCC attorneys failed to inform the court that it was also the FCC themselves that decided that broadband was an information service.
So they have "no legal authority" because they themselves decided they have no legal authority.
But since they (the FCC) also get to decide if a service is telecom or information, they (the FCC) are also quite capable of deciding that they do in fact have the legal authority by deciding that broadband is a telecom service.