Cable, Telco Execs Meet With FCC Again Over Possible Broadband Bill

AT&T, NCTA weigh in on potential reclassification

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 7/29/2010 10:53:47 AM

Tuesday (July 27) was industry's turn in the ongoing meetings over a legislative response to the Comcast/BitTorrent court decision that the FCC had not justified its statutory authority over regulating broadband networks.

According to an ex parte filing released by the FCC Thursday, Jim Cicconi of AT&T and National Cable & Telecommunications Association President Kyle McSlarrow met with FCC Chief of Staff Edward Lazarus to talk about "potential legislation concerning a regulatory framework for promoting Internet openness."

The FCC continues to collect comment on the "third way" proposal through which the FCC would, on its own dime, try to clarify that authority by reclassifying broadband transmissions as a Title II common carrier service while choosing not to apply (forbearing) most of those regs.

But in the face of hefty pushback from Congress--Republican and Democrat alike--on the "third way," the FCC has also been hosting discussions about targeted legislation with industry players and net neutrality advocates, including companies like Google and Skype, on the other side of the debate.

Among the specific topics of discussion in Tuesday's meeting were prohibitions on blocking lawful content, discrimination that "materially harms consumers or competition," disclosure and complaint resolution.

The cable and telco industries want to head off an FCC Title II reclassification declaratory ruling--the FCC would not need to issue a rulemaking--but have long argued that legislative network neutrality mandates, particularly a too-heavy handed nondiscrimination rule, could prevent them from reasonably managing their networks, discourage investment and actually work against the broadband deployment that is currently the FCC's prime directive.