Net neutrality is carefully tailored, FCC jurisdiction paramount says Charter

28 March 2017 by Steve Blum
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Master of disguise.

Proving the adage that it’s an ill wind that blows no good, Charter Communications is taking shelter behind the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to regulate broadband as a common carrier service. In a request submitted to a federal court in New York (h/t to the Hollywood Reporter), Charter argued that the New York attorney general shouldn’t be allowed to sue it in state court over consumer fraud allegations, because the FCC has preempted such matters when it issued its network neutrality order in 2015. The accusations mostly involve Time Warner Cable’s practices before Charter bought it last year.

It’s a legal question that turns on whether the New York attorney general is pursuing a garden variety consumer fraud case that just happens to involve Internet service or trying to regulate the broadband industry. In its filing, Charter has very kind words for common carrier rules…

Pursuant to the [federal communications act], all common carriers (including [Internet service] providers) “engaged in interstate or foreign communication by wire or radio” must employ “just and reasonable” “practices . . . in connection with [their] communication service,” and the FCC is statutorily charged with “prescrib[ing] such rules and regulations as may be necessary” to implement this requirement…

To implement “th[is] carefully tailored regulatory scheme,” the FCC “announce[d] [its] intention to exercise [its] preemption authority to preclude states from imposing obligations on [Internet service] that are inconsistent” with the FCC’s…(“[T]he [FCC’s] jurisdiction is paramount and conflicting state regulations must necessarily yield to the federal regulatory scheme.”).

Like Comcast, Cox and (formerly) Time Warner Cable, Charter isn’t one of the formal plaintiffs that are fighting the FCC’s decision in federal court, but it’s a member of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, which is. Vehemently. Among other things, it accused the FCC of having improperly “arrogated to itself breathtaking authority”. Charter opposed the reclassification of broadband as a common carrier service, calling it “unnecessary and harmful”, among other things.

Charter, like other cable companies, frequently uses lobbying fronts, such as the NCTA, to fight its corner in regulatory and legal battles. It agreed to more or less abide by the FCC’s common carrier rules as a condition of its purchase of Time Warner Cable last year, but that shouldn’t be confused with agreeing with the FCC decision or, indeed, accepting its jurisdiction over broadband service at all.

Nor should its bald faced pleading before the federal court.