Telco Internet service providers joined cable ISPs in slamming the Federal Communications Commission over its decision, on a 3-2 vote, to reclassify Internet access as a Title II telecommunications service.

Verizon called the decision "a net loss for innovation and consumers."

“Today’s decision by the FCC to encumber broadband Internet services with badly antiquated regulations is a radical step that presages a time of uncertainty for consumers, innovators and investors," said Verizon senior VP Michael Glover. "Over the past two decades, a bipartisan, light-touch policy approach unleashed unprecedented investment and enabled the broadband Internet age consumers now enjoy.

“The FCC today chose to change the way the commercial Internet has operated since its creation," Glover said. "Changing a platform that has been so successful should be done, if at all, only after careful policy analysis, full transparency, and by the legislature, which is constitutionally charged with determining policy. As a result, it is likely that history will judge today’s actions as misguided."

In a blog post, AT&T senior executive VP Jim Cicconi wrote: "Instead of a clear set of rules moving forward, with a broad set of agreement behind them, we once again face the uncertainty of litigation, and the very real potential of having to start over-- again -- in the future. "Partisan decisions taken on 3-2 votes can be undone on similarly partisan 3-2 votes only two years hence. And FCC decisions made without clear authorization by Congress -- and who can honestly argue Congress intended this? -- can be undone quickly by Congress or the courts. This may suit partisans who lust for issues of political division, but it isn't healthy for the Internet ecosystem, for the economy or for our political system."

And, followed to its logical conclusion, this will do long term damage to the FCC as well, Cicconi said.

"For our part, we will continue to seek a consensus solution, and hopefully bipartisan legislation, even if we are the last voice seeking agreement rather than division," he added. "And we will hope that other voices of reason will emerge, voices who recognize that animosity, exaggeration, demonization, and fear-mongering are not a basis on which to make wise national policies."

CITA: The Wireless Association president Meredith Attwell Baker called the decision "disappointing and unnecessary," as well as illegal -- the CTIA has said it would sue. She said consumers "have – and will always have – access to an open mobile Internet."

"By ignoring the fundamental differences in wireless networks and disregarding the intense competition throughout the mobile ecosystem, the FCC abandoned a long-standing policy framework responsible for fostering America’s world-leading wireless industry," she added. "The FCC's claim that the mobile voice experience supports the FCC's efforts distorts history and the law, turning a deregulatory statute in 1993 on its head. Title II needlessly puts at risk our nation’s 5G future and the promise of a more connected life.

“The agency’s action runs counter to an express Congressional directive prohibiting the agency from treating mobile broadband like a utility service, making today’s decision not only unwise, but unlawful," Attwell Baker continued. "The economic and legal uncertainty that will inevitably follow from the FCC’s unilateral action underscores the importance of, and urgent need for, bipartisan Congressional action that can end the net-neutrality debate and allow our country’s mobile ecosystem to focus on what it does best – innovating, investing and empowering Americans’ mobile, connected lives.”

AT&T execs had a tech talk with the FCC this week as part of its pitch for a user-generated approach to commercially reasonable discrimination.

AT&T is suggesting that the FCC's new network neutrality rules could include a rebuttable presumption against ISP-generated discrimination, but allow for user-directed discrimination. For example, say a real-time gamer who wants to prioritize that service, where jitter can ruin the user experience, over e-mail where a second or two delay is not noticeable.

According to a filing with the FCC, Bill Smith, president of technology operations for AT&T, met with the FCC's chief technology officer Scott Jordan to discuss how AT&T business customers prioritize traffic using protocols like DiffServ, a network architecture for prioritizing some traffic, real-time voice or streaming media, for example, over other services.

They also talked about AT&T's prioritization of U-verse services.

Smith then made the point of how the technology could be used to provide for user-directed prioritization. He said that the consumer and edge provider might have to mark traffic for prioritization, and ISPs would need to establish "appropriate arrangements" for that.

Also at the meetings were Bob Quinn, Gary Phillips and Henry Hultquist of AT&T and Antonio Sweet of the FCC's Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis.

The FCC has named the teams that will oversee the review of the proposed Comcast/Time Warner Cable and AT&T/DirecTV mergers.

Jonathan Sallet, general counsel, will head up the steering committee for both transactions, which will include the relevant chiefs of the Media, Wireline Competition and Wireless Telecom bureaus.

FCC attorney Hillary Burchuk will head the team reviewing Comcast/TWC and the associated Charter systems spinoffs. Bill Dever from, the Wireline Competition Bureau will be her deputy.

Jamillia Padua Ferris, a partner with the firm of Hunton & Williams, will head up the review of proposed AT&T/DirecTV merger, working out of the Office of General Counsel. Elizabeth Andrion, from the Office of Strategic Planning & Policy Analysis, will be her deputy.

Ferris is a former attorney in the antitrust division at the Department of Justice, which is also vetting the deal along with the FCC.

William Rogerson will be senior economist on both deals and Shane Greenstein will second chair as senior economic consultant. Greenstein is a professor at Northwestern

Writers Guild of America, West, president Christopher Keyser, will tell the Senate antitrust subcommittee Tuesday (June 24) that the proposed AT&T/DirecTV merger "threatens the progress of our most vital communication platforms and will stifle the creativity, independence and innovation enabled by online video."

The merger will inevitably lead to collusion on price, choice and service, he said, cannot be mitigated by conditions, is not in the public interest, and should be blocked.

Keyser said that was coming from a group representing more than 8,000 TV and movie writers.

"The writers whom I represent have experienced two decades of consolidation, which has reduced a once vibrant market of independent producers to one in which seven companies control almost all of television," he said in written testimony for a Senate antitrust subcommittee hearing on the deal.

WGAW has long complained that consolidation in general leads to job losses and opportunities lost for independent content to find a home.

It is also concerned that consolidation will limit new opportunities online.

"The mergers between incumbent video and Internet service providers (ISPs) are happening at a time when new video competition is emerging online, giving consumers added choice and reintroducing independent programming to the landscape," he says.

Keyser also took aim at the proposed Comcast/Time Warner Cable deal, which WGAW also has problems with, branding the current marketplace one of "merger mania."

"If this merger is approved by regulators, along with the Comcast – Time Warner Cable merger, two companies will control more than half of the nation’s MVPD subscribers and half of the wired Internet access market," he said. "The resulting companies would have unprecedented power as content gatekeepers. This consolidation of distributors will likely spur additional consolidation among content providers. In fact, the financial press reports that Univision, AMC Networks and Scripps Networks Interactive are potential acquisition targets."

He also pointed out that AT&T has argued it needed to get bigger to compete with Comcast and other cable providers, while Comcast has said it needed to get bigger to compete with companies like AT&T and DirecTV.

Keyser says the conditions offered by AT&T-DirecTV--deploying broadband to more consumers, promising stand-alone offerings at reasonable  prices, adhering to net neutrality rules--provide little protection against the merger's harms. 

The American Cable Association is telling Congress it thinks the government needs to put conditions on the AT&T/DirecTV deal to decrease the incentive of DirecTV-affiliated programmers from charging higher prices to their rivals, which include hundreds of ACA members.

That is according to the written testimony of Ross Lieberman, SVP of government affairs for hearings on the proposed deal in both the House and Senate June 24.

Lieberman cited ACA's concern over consolidation in general, including the proposed Comcast/Time Warner Cable deal and Comcast/Charter system swaps.

"Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) need to ensure that consumers who reside in markets served by smaller MVPDs will not lose any competitive options or see their prices increase as the consolidation wave continues," he said.

ACA wants a condition preventing AT&T/DirecTV from charging rivals more for programming, but wants a better enforcement mechanism than the arbitration conditions imposed when Liberty bought DirecTV or Comcast bought NBCU.

While it was at it, ACA also said the FCC should levy regulatory fees on DBS as it does on cable operators. ACA pointed out that the FCC has said that the per-sub fees for cable operators and IPTV providers would drop from $1 to 68 cents if DBS were included.

ACA also pushed the FCC to allow program-buying consortium NCTC, which gives smaller and medium-sized groups more muscle in negotiations with programmers, to file program access complaints. The FCC has for a couple of years been considering changing the definition of buying group to include NCTC.

AT&T has proposed buying DirecTV for just south of $50 billion, subject to approval by the Justice Department and the FCC.

The American Cable Association wants the government to look at the big picture when it reviews a proposed AT&T/DirecTV deal, a picture ACA suggests is getting bigger all the time with the recent wave of megadeals.

In a statement, ACA President Matt Polka said the association, which represents mid-sized and smaller cable ops, is concerned by the latest deal announcement, or what he called the "proposed takeover of DirecTV."

“AT&T’s deal merits the closest scrutiny by the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission," he said. "However, it is increasingly clear that Congress and the FCC simultaneously need to take a comprehensive look at the market that will exist if all these deals are approved, and to decide whether existing rules that govern the current market are sufficient for the new industry order."

Among the questions that scrutiny needs to focus on, he said, are "Will consumers not served by Comcast, Charter, and AT&T be harmed from a marketplace dominated by a few large players, especially when this consolidation is combined with rampant consolidation in the broadcast industry?" and "Will these customers be harmed by mergers that may result in the video content industry as a result of the consolidation in the pay-TV distribution industry?"