House Republicans weren't able to get a policy rider into the government spending omnibus bill last month to outright kill net neutrality, so they're back at the fight in this new year. This time around, they're seemingly being less obvious about it, with efforts that on the surface just seem to nibble away at the open internet rule, but in reality are much broader.
The House Energy and Commerce technology subcommittee considered two net neutrality bills Tuesday. The first would nominally prevent the Federal Communications Commission from regulating Internet service prices (something the FCC has already said it will not do) but of course goes well beyond that.
The bill's broad language "virtually guarantees a host of unintended consequences that are bad for consumers and bad for competition," Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld said at a hearing by the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology.
He added that the measure could prevent the FCC from enforcing consumer protection laws, as well as policing overcharges and "outright fraud."
Feld also said that the measure could be interpreted in a way that would prohibit the FCC to enforce net neutrality rules against paid fast lanes, on the grounds that those rules also regulate the rates charged for broadband access services.
That would essentially gut the rule, which may or may not be the legislation’s intended consequence. I'm leaning toward it being very deliberate. "The bill could give companies like AT&T and Verizon carte blanche to gouge Internet users with punitive data caps, discriminatory exemptions, unjustified fees and penalties, outrageous overages, and even fraudulent charges," wrote Free Press Action Fund Policy Director Matt Wood in a statement. "It would hand ISPs an argument against any and every Net Neutrality rule they might conceivably dress up as a rate regulation."
The second bill the committee considered is perhaps less damaging, but completely ridiculous. It's all about how "small" is defined when it comes to internet service providers, who Republicans want exempted from the transparency requirements in the new rules. They want to redefine small as 500,000 or fewer subscribers or fewer than 1,500 employees. Currently, ISPs with fewer than 100,000 subscribers are exempted. In practice, this bill would mean all but the largest ISPs would be exempted.