Edge Providers Should Be Concerned About Logic of Net Neutrality Decision, Kovacs Says
Edge providers like YouTube and Facebook should be a little concerned about parts of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decision upholding the FCC net neutrality order (see 1606140023), emailed Anna-Maria Kovacs, visiting senior policy scholar…
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at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy. “The logic used by the FCC and upheld by the court has opened the door to subjecting any Internet platform to Title II” of the Communications Act, she wrote Tuesday. “That cannot bode well for those many edge providers that were temporarily exempted by the FCC but can easily be reached once it decides to extend its regulations to them.” The court upheld the FCC decision to reclassify mobile broadband as a common-carrier service, Kovacs said. “The same logic that enabled the FCC to reclassify mobile broadband applies to many edge providers,” she said. “Given the FCC’s arguments and the court’s acceptance of them, can any of the Internet platforms that have myriad users and massive revenues and can potentially be reached by any or all IP endpoints escape classification as telecommunications services? By the FCC’s and court’s logic, how can platforms like Facebook, FaceTime, Vonage, Skype, YouTube, Gmail, or even Uber be anything other than telecommunications services?”