Comcast: Hill Needs to End Net Neutrality Regulatory Ping-Pong

Comcast joined the ISP blogfestWednesday with its take on the internet day of advocacy organized by groups seeking to protest the planned FCC rollback of Title II classification of internet access. 

As with other ISPs, it said legislation was the key to ending what it called a decade-long "game of regulatory ping pong."

Comcast has been a central player, winning a court challenge to the FCC's initial internet openness principles (as unenforceable), which led to the FCC's first network neutrality rules.

Comcast senior executive VP David Cohen calls it hysteria to suggest that without Title II, "the internet as we know it will disappear."

"We wanted to reinforce today—to the public, our customers, regulators, and legislators—what we’ve been saying and doing for years," blogged Cohen. "We support permanent, strong, legally enforceable net neutrality rules. We don’t and won’t block, throttle, or discriminate against lawful content. We also believe in full transparency; you’ll know what our customer policies are."

The way to get those rules, Cohen says, is for Congress to provide the blueprint. "In the end, bipartisan legislation is the best course to pursue—putting in place strong, permanent, and legally enforceable net neutrality rules that fully protect consumers, while fostering growth, investment, innovation, and deployment of broadband to all Americans." 

But Cohen says no matter what happens in Washington, Comcast won't block, throttle or discriminate.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.