Today, the Federal Communications Commission issued a bureau-level Public Notice to “refresh the record” on net neutrality as requested by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in Mozilla v. FCC, when the court upheld most of the agency’s net neutrality repeal.
The following can be attributed to Jenna Leventoff, Senior Policy Counsel at Public Knowledge:
“The court in Mozilla required the FCC to address how its Restoring Internet Freedom Order, which repealed the agency’s net neutrality rules and took away FCC jurisdiction over broadband, impacted public safety, pole attachments, and the Lifeline program. Instead of opening new rulemaking proceedings to properly address the Court’s serious concerns, the FCC has combined them into a single, four-page, bureau-level public notice, and provided a mere 40 days for public comment on all of them. The nature of the questions the FCC has put forward, also, appear to assume that the Commission got it right the first time, an opinion the Court clearly did not share.
“Public Knowledge is deeply disappointed in the FCC for failing to take the court’s request seriously, and for its apparent lack of desire to think about how its Order will impact the safety of the American public, the beneficiaries of the Lifeline program, and the entities using pole attachments to provide broadband. We encourage the public to speak out about the importance of a free and open internet.”
For more information on why we strongly opposed the FCC’s net neutrality repeal, please view our recent blog post, “Two Years Later, Broadband Providers Are Still Taking Advantage of An Internet Without Net Neutrality Protections.”
Members of the media may contact Communications Director Shiva Stella with inquiries, interview requests, or to join the Public Knowledge press list at shiva@publicknowledge.org or 405-249-9435.