Pay TV stocks remained stable in the wake of Federal Communications Commission chief Ajit Pai’s moves to dismantle Title II classification of broadband providers, keeping a promise he made when he took office earlier this year.

Related: FCC Moving to Repeal Bright-Line Net Neutrality Rules

For the most part, stocks in the cable distribution sector were flat. Comcast rose 1.7% and Charter was up less than 1% for the day.

Pai has long opposed so-called net neutrality, a set of regulations under the 2015 Open Internet order and imposed by Pai's predecessor, Tom Wheeler. Wheeler, who was named FCC chair in the Obama Administration, called Pai’s recent moves “a tragedy,” according to reports.

But cable and telco broadband service providers have opposed the rules from the start, arguing that they are already doing much of what the regulations mandate on their own. And while Pai’s moves could allow broadband companies to throttle back some websites and charge for priority speeds or treatment, they would have to disclose when they are doing that even under the new rules. Perhaps that, and the fact that Pai’s stance on the regulation has never been a secret, led to the relatively tepid market reaction.

Related: House Republicans Say They'll Work for Permanent Net-Neutrality Rules

Comcast closed at $36.42 per share, up 59 cents each or 1.7%, while Charter Communications finished the day at $338.51, up 14 cents each or 0.04%. Altice USA shares fell 1.9% (38 cents each) to $20.10 each.

Telcos Verizon Communications, down 2 cents (0.04%) to $46.18 and AT&T, which Monday (Nov. 20) revealed the Department of Justice filed suit to block its merger with Time Warner Inc., fell 31 cents each (0.89%) to $34.33 per share.

On the content side, Viacom rose 4.2% ($1.12) to $27.27 each; Time Warner rose $1.85 each (2.1%) to $89.56 per share, The Walt Disney Co. rose 25 cents (0.24%) to $103 each and 21st Century Fox increased 22 cents (0.7%) to $30.88 per share. AMC Networks rose 71 cents (1.4%) to $50.55 per share and Discovery Communications, in the middle of the regulatory approval process for its $14,6 billion purchase of Scripps Networks, fell 12 cents each (0.7%) to $17.24 per share.

Tech stocks like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Netflix were relatively flat as well. Facebook was up the most – 1.75% or $3.12 each to $181.86 –followed by Google, up 1.6% ($16.13 per share) to $1,034.51; Amazon up 1.2% ($13.28 each) to $1,139.59; and Netflix, up 1.1% ($2.12 each) to $196.22 per share.

FCC chair Ajit Pai has followed through on his promise to roll back Title II classification of internet access providers, meaning they will no longer be considered common carriers subject to mandatory access requirements.

Pai has circulated an item to the other commissioners in advance of a planned Dec. 14 vote. He is expected to have the votes to pass it over strong Democratic opposition.

The item's circulation before the Thanksiving holiday was one of the worst kept secrets in Washington over the past few days as critics of the rollback prepared statements and planned protests.

Related: Demand Progress Plans Net-Neutrality Protests at Verizon Stores

Pai voted against the 2015 Open Internet order as a commissioner and signaled early on that the Title II classification was one of the regulatory weeds he planned to whack.

“Today, I have shared with my colleagues a draft order that would abandon this failed approach and return to the longstanding consensus that served consumers well for decades," said Pai. "Under my proposal, the federal government will stop micromanaging the Internet. Instead, the FCC would simply require Internet service providers to be transparent about their practices so that consumers can buy the service plan that’s best for them and entrepreneurs and other small businesses can have the technical information they need to innovate.

“Additionally, as a result of my proposal, the Federal Trade Commission will once again be able to police ISPs, protect consumers, and promote competition, just as it did before 2015," Pai added. "Notably, my proposal will put the federal government’s most experienced privacy cop, the FTC, back on the beat to protect consumers’ online privacy."

In proposing the rollback in an NPRM last May, the FCC Republican majority said the goal was to "promote broadband deployment to rural consumers and infrastructure investment throughout our nation, to brighten the future of innovation both within networks and at their edge, and to close the digital divide."

It remains to be seen how strongly Google, Facebook, Twitter and other edge providers will push to reinstate rules given that there has been talk on Capitol Hill of starting to impose net-neutrality regs on them as well. Edge providers helped killed the SOPA/PIPA antipiracy legislation when they perceived that as an existential threat.

Related: Edge Providers Have D.C. on Edge

Calling it a pre-holiday "news dump," Democratic commissioner Mignon Clyburn, who supported the 2015 order, was not happy.

“In just two days, many of us will join friends and family in celebrating the spirit of Thanksgiving. But as we learned today, the FCC majority is about to deliver a cornucopia full of rotten fruit, stale grains, and wilted flowers topped off with a plate full of burnt turkey," she said. "Their Destroying Internet Freedom Order would dismantle net neutrality as we know it by giving the green light to our nation’s largest broadband providers to engage in anti-consumer practices, including blocking, slowing down traffic, and paid prioritization of online applications and services."

“Today the FCC circulated its sweeping roll back of our net neutrality rules," said FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, who also voted for the original Title II-absed rules. "Following actions earlier this year to erase consumer privacy protections, the Commission now wants to wipe out court-tested rules and a decade’s work in order to favor cable and telephone companies.  This is ridiculous and offensive to the millions of Americans who use the Internet every day."

Related: House Antitrust Tackles Network Neutrality

ISPs were, not surprisingly, cheeering the order.

"ACA commends FCC Chairman Ajit Pai for outlining his proposed Restoring Internet Freedom order, which the FCC is scheduled to act on in several weeks," said American Cable Association president Matthew Polka. "Since the beginning of his tenure in January, Chairman Pai has focused intently on giving American consumers 'more' - more high-performance networks, more innovative services, and more choices. His proposed Restoring Internet Freedom order will further achieve this aim by removing the dark cloud of Title II regulation that has hung over the industry and deterred investment by the many hundreds of Internet Services Providers throughout the country, including in smaller communities and rural areas. And, not only will the proposed decision drive investment, it will come at no cost to an 'open Internet.' The ISPs that are ACA members have always stood steadfast in providing their customers with unfettered access to the Internet, regardless of whether there were regulations on the books. Treating your customers well is simply good business, and that practice will not change with this decision."

Randolph May, president of free-market think tank the Free State Foundation, said: "The FCC's current regulations, put in place at President Obama's direction in 2015, constitute a misguided act of regulatory aggression leveled at the dynamic broadband Internet marketplace. It is none too soon to repeal them."

WASHINGTON — Critics of Republican Federal Communications Commission chair Ajit Pai have been pressing him to commit fully and unequivocally to not regulating issues based on the content of speech. However, a supporter of his network neutrality stance is using that same argument to justify Pai’s planned rollback of Title II-based rules.

Specifically at issue is the Open Internet order’s allowance for one type of discrimination — family-friendly filtering — and not others. A Supreme Court ruling made since the order was adopted would appear to make that allowance an unconstitutional content-based restriction — difficult to justify in court.

After President Donald Trump tweeted his suggestion that news outlets running stories he didn’t like should perhaps have their licenses challenged and revoked, Congressional Democrats and media activist groups, joined by journalists and many others, were up in arms. The idea that the content of speech should determine its regulatory protection, or the lack of it, ruffled many a feather.

But Brent Skorup, a research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, in a meeting with FCC officials earlier this month, said content-based regulation was just what the agency had attempted to do in the Open Internet order, and does not withstand the strict constitutional scrutiny such speech-based regulation demands.

The key is a 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Reed vs. Town of Gilbert, having to do with an ordinance that allowed for different treatment of signs — religious, political, directional — based on content.

The court concluded, “A law that is content-based on its face is subject to strict scrutiny regardless of the government’s benign motive,” in this case allowing for discrimination on the basis of family friendliness.

Skorup said he thinks the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet order, which treated ISPs as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act , has a rocky First Amendment road. “The Supreme Court clarified its standard for what is content-based,” he said, “and I think the rules and the order discriminate against different types of content.”

Pai is crafting a rollback of the rules, and legal defense, likely for a vote in December. He almost certainly has the two other GOP votes to pass it. But a reversal of the previous FCC decision will be challenged in court, so the more ammunition the chairman has to support that course change, the better.

Regulatory agencies are free to amend their rulings, something obviously more likely to happen under a change in administration. But to survive legal challenge, the FCC must demonstrate that the change was not arbitrary and capricious, and that it was a reasonable decision based on the record, which is required whether it is an initial decision or a changed one.

A record that includes violating the First Amendment would be a strong legal card to have in reserve.

Looking to make the net-neutrality docket easier to review by outside parties, the FCC has put some "zip" into the search process.

The agency has made all Restoring Internet Freedom comments filed as of Nov. 3 -- more than 22 million of them -- available in compressed, downloadable files. 

The comments have been organized, in batches of 10,000, into JSON files that are aggregated into three zipped archives:

https://data.fcc.gov/comments/17-108/ECFS_17-108_1.zip

https://data.fcc.gov/comments/17-108/ECFS_17-108_2.zip

https://data.fcc.gov/comments/17-108/ECFS_17-108_3.zip

The FCC is encouraging the public to use those files in "exploring the docket" and to "ensure that they have a complete set of filings."

FCC chair Ajit Pai is widely expected to circulate an order rolling back Title II classification of internet access and reviewing the current Open Internet order this month for a vote next month. It is that proposal that drew the 22 million-plus comments.

The FCC closed the comment period Aug. 30, but continued to accept comments anyway -- per custom -- and the comments continued to flood in.

Technically, only those before the Aug. 30 deadline are considered part of the record the FCC has to consider in making its decision.

FCC spokespeople were not immediately available for comment on the new archive.

Fight for the Future says that July 12 will be a "day of action" on net neutrality, similar to the previous internet slowdown and SOPA blackout, part of the successful campaign to stop the Stop Online Piracy Act, not the first time that similarity has been invoked in the present pushback on FCC chair Ajit Pai's play to reverse the Title II classification of ISPs. 

RELATED: Senate Democrats Declare War on Title II Rollback 

Amazon, Reddit, Mozilla, Etsy and others are planning to participate in what they are dubbing an "Internet-Wide Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality," according to Fight for the Future campaign director Even Greer.

RELATED: The Surprisingly Narrow Title II Decision

Rather than a slowdown, Fight for the Future suggests it will be a speed up of actions to fight against the Title II rollback, saying the effort will focus on grassroots mobilization including public interest groups energizing their members and web platforms providing tools for the public to contact the Hill and the FCC.

RELATED: AT&T: Blocking, Slowing Appear Allowable Under Title II

"The Internet has given more people a voice than ever before, and we’re not going to let the FCC take that power away from us," said Greer.

The FCC has already received almost 5 million comments in its network neutrality docket, driven in part by efforts of Fight for the Future and other pro-Title II groups and individuals--including HBO's John Oliver.

RELATED: FCC's Open Internet Docket Explodes

The FCC has voted along party lines to propose rolling back Title II, eliminating the general conduct standard for reviewing potential net neutrality violations, and reviewing whether to retain rules against blocking, throttling and paid prioritization.

Companies participating so far include Amazon, Kickstarter, Etsy, Reddit, Mozilla, Vimeo, Y Combinator, GitHub, Private Internet Access, Pantheon, Bittorrent Inc., Shapeways, Nextdoor, Patreon, Dreamhost, and CREDO Mobile. Organizations participating include Fight for the Future, Free Press Action Fund, Demand Progress, Center for Media Justice, Internet Archive, World Wide Web Foundation, Creative Commons, National Hispanic Media Coalition, Greenpeace, Common Cause, ACLU, American Library Association, Daily Kos, OpenMedia, The Nation, PCCC, MoveOn, OFA, Public Knowledge, OTI, and Color of Change.

FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn will join House Energy & Commerce Committee Democrats on the Hill Wednesday following a planned speech by FCC chair Ajit Pai about the future of net-neutrality regulation.

Clyburn is the lone remaining FCC commissioner who supported the FCC's 2015 Open Internet order.

Foes of the reversal of the Title II, common-carrier reclassification of ISPs under Democratic FCC chairman Tom Wheeler and President Barack Obama are expecting Pai's speech to lay out the plans for the chairman's expected rollback -- he strongly dissented from the Open Internet order's reclassification -- though some were looking more for a broad brush than a blueprint.

Clyburn has the power to block a rollback, at least temporarily, by not voting the item on circulation, or not showing up at a public meeting where it was scheduled to be voted, or resigning when her term ends at the end of June -- she could stay on until the end of the Congress after this one if she wanted -- or before.

Related: FCC's Clyburn: 'I Still Have Work to Do'

The FCC needs a quorum to approve items and currently is down to three commissioners:, Pai, fellow Republican and Title II reclassification opponent Michael O'Rielly and Clyburn.

Scheduled to appear at the afternoon press conference on the Hill side are ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), Communications Subcommittee ranking member Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) and Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.).

Pai has been discussing net neutrality with telecom trade groups and edge providers, including how a voluntary commitment to openness regime might work.

Supporters of the FCC's Open Internet order, including Democrats on the Hill, have sworn to fight a pitched battle to preserve it, as they did to get the FCC to pivot toward Title II under Wheeler.

An association representing edge provider powerhouses met with FCC chair Ajit Pai Tuesday (April 11) to argue for preserving the FCC's Title II-based Open Internet order. That comes as Pai is pondering how to roll back Title II, including by potentially having ISPs sign on to voluntary Open Internet principles that would then be enforceable by the Federal Trade Commission.

The Internet Association, whose members include everyone from Amazon to Zenefits (that would be Google, Facebook, ebay, Netflix, Microsoft, Yahoo and a laundry list of others) met with Pai and top staffers to argue for retaining the rules, according to the association.

"IA continues its vigorous support of the FCC’s Open Internet Order, which is a vital component of the free and open Internet," the tech companies told Pai, according to an ex parte document filed with the FCC and confirmed by a spokesperson for the group. "The Internet industry is uniform in its belief that net neutrality preserves the consumer experience, competition and innovation online. In other words, existing net-neutrality rules should be enforced and kept intact."

That is unlikely given that the current FCC Republican majority opposes Title II reclassification and Pai has made it clear he thinks net neutrality can be preserved without classifying ISPs as common carriers under Title II.

The IA argues that the Title II did not have the adverse impact on broadband investment ISPs have argued was the case. Former FCC chair Tom Wheeler, who motormanned the Title II order with an assist from President Obama, has also said the ISP argument about depressing investment was a red herring.

While it had Pai’s ear, the IA also argued that there was a qualitative difference between edge providers and ISPs that justified different treatment of broadband privacy.

It said that includes the fact that Internet access service have “higher financial, legal, and technical market entry barriers as well as high customer switching costs when compared to edge provider markets” and that “edge providers have more limited visibility into online practices and consumer Information,” a conclusion that it said the FTC has also drawn in concluding that ISPs are “in a position to develop highly detailed and comprehensive profiles of their customers – and to do so in a manner that may be completely invisible.”

Congress two weeks ago nullified the FCC’s broadband privacy rules, which required opt-in consent from ISP subscribers for sharing their personal information with third-party marketers that edge providers can share without that opt-in consent.

WASHINGTON — Forget cybercriminals and rogue states: President Obama is the biggest threat to a free and open Internet, at least according to the platform approved at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on Monday.

“The survival of the Internet as we know it is at risk,” the platform says in its "Protecting Internet Freedom" plank. “Its gravest peril originates in the White House, the current occupant of which has launched a campaign, both at home and internationally, to subjugate it to agents of government.”

Obama pushed for the FCC to reclassify Internet access as a Title II common-carrier service subject to some new regulations, which it did. It was a move Congressional Republicans fought and blamed on what they saw as the president’s intervention. They are also not happy with the administration’s decision to move oversight of Internet domain names to a multistakeholder model.

WASHINGTON — Former Federal Communications Commission chairman Reed Hundt signaled Wednesday he thinks the agency is going to have to allow for some form of zero-rating plans.

Hundt, a Democrat who headed the FCC during President Clinton’s first term, was paired in a lively discussion with current Republican FCC commissioner Michael O'Rielly at the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council’s 14th annual Access to Capital and Telecom Policy Conference in Washington Wednesday (July 13).

Asked about the FCC’s current investigation into zero-rating plans under its network-neutrality general conduct standard, Hundt said he thought the agency was going to have to decide that people — in this case, broadband providers that carve specific services out from usage-based pricing plans — are going to have to be allowed to give things away for free.

“Being against free is not very popular,” he added.

O’Rielly said he did not want the FCC to foreclose the kind of experimentation represented by zero rating plans. He said the agency’s investigation has caused companies to keep some offerings on the sideline while awaiting a decision, and complained that the general-conduct standard has no process for concluding debate.

The pair diverged sharply over the FCC's recent court victory in Internet-service providers’ challenge to that general conduct standard and other parts of the Open Internet order.

Hundt said the FCC’s legal victory was second only to the ruling establishing the agency’s jurisdiction over telephone regulation, which came during his tenure. Had the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit not not also upheld the FCC's jurisdiction over regulating a free and open Internet, the commission would be essentially out of business, and wouldn’t be able to serve as a watchdog for innovative minority entrepreneurs.

O'Rielly, who voted against the order, said the court should not have blessed the FCC's adoption of prescriptive rules absent any evidence of a problem, saying the zero-rating debate vetting under the general conduct standard was a prime example of companies trying to innovate and build a new business, but having to worry that the FCC could jump in anytime, on anything, and decide after the fact it was out of bounds.

O'Rielly said he had talked to manufacturers who had changed product lines because of the decision.

Each was asked which FCC priorities they would like to see under the next presidential administration. O'Reilly said he would like to see some humility and collegiality. Citing a former boss, he said if neither side is asked to bend on principles, there should room for common ground in the middle, within the bounds set by Congress in statute.

Hundt, who pointed out he was a former law school classmate of presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton (who would not go out with him, he added), was more specific.

He pointed out that as the FCC is rolling out its plan for freeing up spectrum for 5G this week, and said buildout rules would need to be in place to insure the new technology is rolled out everywhere and to everyone, regardless of income or geography.

Hundt also said that the FCC might look for more progressive ways to fund its programs (he conceded such funding was essentially a tax). He did not say exactly which programs he was talking about, but did talk elsewhere about Lifeline and e-rate subsidies. He said he did not want to give away too much about what Mrs. Clinton was thinking, but suggested that “those who have a lot of money could pay a greater proportion.”

WASHINGTON — Limited-government groups are taking aim at so-called Chevron deference, a legal principle that requires appeals courts to defer to a government agency’s interpretation of a legal statue that agency is tasked with enforcing, unless that interpretation is judged to be unreasonable.

The most recent such ruling regarding the Federal Communications Commission — which the groups targeted in a joint letter to Congress — was the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s ruling upholding essentially all of the agency’s decisions in reclassifying broadband Internet access as a Title II service under the Communications Act, subject to common-carrier regulations.

In its 1984 decision in Chevron v. the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Supreme Court said that federal agencies were generally granted deference in interpreting ambiguous statutes given their subject matter expertise. In the case of the Open Internet order, the D.C. Circuit did not rule on the wisdom of that reclassification, only on whether the FCC had exceeded authority in interpreting its ability to regulate Internet access under the prevailing statute.

In their letter, more than a dozen groups including Tech Freedom, the Taxpayer Protection Alliance and the appropriately titled Less Government said they wanted Congress to check “regulatory overreach,” such as the FCC’s Open Internet order, by passing the Separation of Powers Restoration Act (SOPRA). The bill — of which there are House and Senate versions —is a Republican-backed effort to “clarify that the Administrative Procedure Act requires courts to conduct a new review of relevant questions of law when evaluating agency regulations — rather than simply deferring to the agency’s judgment.”

The APA is the law laying out how federal agencies can make their rulings. For instance, they can't be arbitrary and capricious.

“The FCC’s Open Internet Order is just one of many instances where Chevron deference has enabled gross regulatory overreach,” the groups said. “SOPRA would prevent administrative agencies from effectively rewriting legislation to suit their purposes — often driven by politics — and restore legislative power to the American people’s elected representatives in Congress.”

President Obama very publicly pushed the FCC to reclassify ISPs as common carriers at a time when the FCC still appeared to be leaning toward not doing so.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s 2-1 majority decision to completely uphold the FCC’s Open Internet Order on every single argued point surprised most everyone, given the number and seriousness of the legal challenges put forth, and the selective skepticism the judges signaled at oral arguments.

Given that this total support of the FCC was not anticipated, what does this potentially seminal court precedent mean practically?

1. For now, the FCC effectively enjoys complete deference from this court on Open Internet issues.

The majority dismissed every single one of the petitioners’ best legal, process and constitutional challenges and proactively cauterized them with court assertions that the FCC’s actions were reasonable, supported by the evidence, and compliant with the APA, or that the challenges were unpersuasive.

In apparently presuming from the start that total Chevron deference was warranted as it discussed and dismissed every single challenge, the court’s majority effectively examined only individual “trees” and, in doing so, apparently ignored most any context of the overall “forest.” The effective organizing principle of Judge Williams’s dissent was to expose that the majority was missing the proverbial forest for the trees in ignoring the contextual, contradictory and cumulative effect of their total deference.

2. The FCC is now the de facto Federal Communications Congress on Open Internet issues and the D.C Circuit appears to be a reliable non-check on the FCC’s regulatory powers.

Until and unless the Supreme Court reverses this decision, at least in part, or Congress passes legislation to the contrary that becomes law, the FCC Open Internet Order is the law of the land and three votes by unelected FCC commissioners may effectively continue to legislate whatever they want as long as they can base their decisions somehow on some Title II provision and provide a modicum of notice, justification and evidence to support the FCC’s decision.

Given that the court majority’s total Chevron deference apparently ignored Congress’ role, congressional intent, and its due process guardrails enshrined in the normally guiding Administrative Procedures Act, for now the FCC is practically more of a creature of the Executive Branch than a creature of Congress on Internet issues.

3. The FCC and this affirming court decision de facto create new operative Open Internet law that makes the FCC’s “virtuous circle theory of Internet openness” the effective “modern” purpose and organizing principle behind FCC regulation.

What many forget is that the terms “net neutrality,” “Open Internet,” “virtuous circle of innovation” and “edge provider” are all FCC-created/adopted terms and principles that are not found in U.S. law written by Congress about the FCC. However, this USTelecom v. FCC decision, along with its predecessor decision Verizon v. FCC, use these terms and concepts repeatedly throughout their “net neutrality” decisions, which effectively gives those FCC terms a practical force of law to some extent.

As Judge Stephen Williams’s dissent effectively explains in great detail, the FCC ignores and avoids discussing Congress’s 1996 purpose for the FCC of promoting “competition” because it so conflicts with and undermines the FCC’s homegrown purpose for itself of promoting “net neutrality” and an ”Open Internet” and the “virtuous circle of innovation” for the benefit of the FCC-created constituency of “edge providers.”

The FCC is loathe to talk about “competition” in the context of net neutrality because it kneecaps its necessity and urgency, and because it brings unwelcome attention to the fact that the least competitive segments in the U.S. economy are dominated by giant “edge” platforms that the FCC is proactively protecting and helping, like Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon.

4. The FCC’s net-neutrality regime’s greatest strength, that three FCC votes can do anything, is now also its greatest vulnerability — three “no” FCC votes in the future. Only Congress can give the FCC’s Open Internet creation the permanence and credibility it needs to survive long term.

This appeals court decision is a two-edged sword. What three FCC commissioner votes have created in the Open Internet Order, three future different FCC commissioner votes could destroy under the total FCC deference this court decision confers on an FCC majority in the future.

As huge a win as this court decision is to the FCC, and to the very strategic, clever and determined elite brain trust behind its creation and growth, its victory is temporary and highly vulnerable long-term without Congress ultimately embedding their principles, concepts and terms permanently into law. 

Scott Cleland served as Deputy U.S. Coordinator for International Communications & Information Policy in the George H. W. Bush Administration. He is president of Precursor LLC, a research consultancy for Fortune 500 companies, and chairman of NetCompetition, a pro-competition e-forum supported by broadband interests.

Fresh from celebrating a U.S. federal appeals court's decision to uphold the FCC's Open Internet order, Fight for the Future, a digital rights group that advocated, and protested, in support of the FCC, is moving its focus to the European Union with plans for a 'net slowdown event.

The group said it has created www.savenetneutrality.eu and plans on calling for an EU Slowdown on June 28, similar to the Web protests for strong Title II-based net neutrality rules and the protests against the SOPA/PIPA legislation several years ago. 

"We are providing a line of code that websites, blogs, and Tumblr users can use to protest, with symbolic “slow loading” icons (in the style of the EU flag!) that drive comments to BEREC, the EU regulator that will decide net neutrality," said a spokesperson for the group.

"In the US, campaigns like this one were instrumental in driving the 3.7 million comments that paved the way to victory. Now, the groups behind that win are helping to bring the same tactics to Europe," he said. 

The Body of European Regulators of Electronic Communications (BEREC) is currently considering their own net neutrality rules, the group points out, and it sees loopholes that need closing before any final ruling is issued.

Edge providers and public activist groups got together on a letter Tuesday (May 24) calling on the FCC to bring its investigation of zero-rating plans out into the open.

Last fall, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler announced that the agency had begun investigating the zero-rating plans of T-Mobile, Comcast, Verizon and AT&T under its Open Internet general conduct standard, but the groups want the FCC to open a formal proceeding with a chance for outside input from stakeholders.

"In the Open Internet Order, the FCC declined to issue a bright-line rule against zero-rating, noting a lack of consensus on the issue in the record," they wrote in a letter to Wheeler. "However, in the time since the Order was released, ISPs have created a broad enough set of test cases that a decision on each of them would have much the same effect as a new rule, only without the same public participation and transparency.

"Making decisions on these cases would set precedents for future practices, and would have implications for the Internet ecosystem that reach far beyond the stakeholders directly affected by these individual plans," they added. "These decisions are too important to happen behind closed doors."

They cited the very public nature of the Open Internet rule process that generated the general conduct standard now being applied, and said the zero-rating issue should get similar wide and deep participation.

"The FCC’s process in this critical area would be immeasurably enriched by the participation of diverse stakeholders, many of whose input helped shape the Open Internet rules," they said. "Together, we stand ready to contribute to your careful evaluation of this important issue, to protect an open Internet where innovation, competition and civil rights can thrive."

Among those standing ready were Mozilla, Kickstarter, Pinterest, Vimeo, Etsy and Yelp, as well as Common Cause, Fight for the Future and the Future of Music Coalition.

Zero-rating plan foes got together over the weekend to collect signatures on a letter they plan to send today (March 28) to FCC chairman Tom Wheeler urging him to crack down on zero-rating plans before they "break the Net."

The FCC is currently investigating zero-rating plans -- in which some video content does not count against usage caps -- from a handful of top ISPs as part of its Open Internet general conduct standard of review for business practices that could impede a free and open Internet, including Comcast's Stream TV, which has a complaint filed against it.

The groups appear to have no doubt the practice violates both the spirit and the letter of the new FCC Open Internet rules.

"As currently offered, these plans enable ISPs to pick winners and losers online or create new tolls for websites and applications," they wrote.

Referring to the Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile plans being vetted by the FCC, the groups say the services "distort competition, thwart innovation, threaten free speech and restrict consumer choice." Those are all harms the FCC's Open Internet rules were meant to prevent, they argue, and allowing them would be "a serious threat to the Open Internet."

The groups also made a point of saying the FCC's Open Internet order "ensures that Internet users control the content they access, not their ISPs."

"The Open Internet rules say that ISPs cannot pick winners and losers online by slowing down some applications and services while speeding up others," they added.

The net-neutrality rules do not hold edge providers to the same standard, however, since, as Wheeler has pointed out pointedly, the rules to not apply to them.

That disparity hit the fan last week when Netflix conceded its users did not have control over the Netflix content they accessed over AT&T and Verizon broadband service -- Netflix said it was limiting the quality to keep users under bandwidth caps, though the company added it was working on a technology to give users control over bit rates vis-a-vis bandwidth caps.

A spokesperson for those groups calling for no zero-rating plans was checking at press time whether they were also concerned about Netflix throttling online video without telling customers or the companies.

Among the groups signing on to the letter were MoveOn.org, ColorOfChange, Center for Media Justice, Fight for the Future, Demand Progress, Free Press and Open Technology Institute.

Free Press policy director Matt Wood said he sees a clear difference between ISPs as carriers subject to neutrality rules, and Netflix, which is not.

"The bottom line for me is that net neutrality prevents carriers from dictating what we say to each other,” he told Multichannel News. “It doesn't dictate what we say to each other ["we" including Netflix as a speaker]. Netflix is free to transmit its content however it wants. If users want to leave that behind because they don't like that, that's fine. I'm not here to defend anything Netflix is doing, but you can't shoehorn this into net neutrality because it is not about the carrier in the middle interfering with content."

"Free data services are pro-consumer, innovative offerings that we should all embrace," said Brad Gillen, EVP at CTIA, which represents wireless ISPs. "It should also come as no surprise that mobile consumers love free data so they can watch videos, listen to music or use the Internet without charges to their monthly data allowance. The FCC should reject efforts to take away from consumers these free data services and options."

“To claim that zero rating is anything other than good for consumers makes zero sense," says Mobile Future board chair Jonathan Spalter. "It is almost as ridiculous as defending Netflix on Friday (March 25) for secretly throttling video to millions of unsuspecting customers and turning around on Monday to attack consumer-friendly free data offerings. "New service options that make it easier for consumers to afford access to more content is a good thing. Free mobile data offerings give consumers more than they pay for, which is particularly important for price-sensitive consumers. If the FCC is trying to encourage competition and consumer choice, it will reject efforts to thwart carriers from vying for customers with differentiated new service offerings. Doing anything less will make America’s wireless consumers the ultimate losers.”

Mobile Future members include Samsung, Verizon, and Qualcomm.

WASHINGTON — Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler told a congressional panel Tuesday (March 22) that he believes the agency has the authority to regulate broadband rates after the fact.

Wheeler’s comments were made at an FCC oversight hearing in the House Communications Subcommittee.

He was asked about the matter by Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), whose bill preventing broadband rate regulation passed a divided House Energy & Commerce Committee last week.

Wheeler had initially said he supported the underlying theme of preventing broadband rate regulations, but had since clarified in a letter that he was talking specifically about Congress codifying the FCC's Open Internet order forbearance of ex ante (before the fact) rate regulations, not other authorities like preventing anti-competitive paid prioritization or throttling that might implicate rates.

Wheeler and House Democrats are concerned that Kinzinger's bill is not targeted enough and could sweep in various consumer protections, like those in the Open Internet order.

Following the hearing, the press office for the House Energy & Commerce Committee majority issued a release pointing to Wheeler's support for FCC ex post facto rate regulation authority via enforcement, saying it contradicts prior administration promises not to regulate broadband rates.

The Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC) has asked a D.C. federal appeals court to vacate the FCC's Open Internet order, saying the FCC's "failure to address the impact of its Order on the digitally disadvantaged is in our opinion why the decision is arbitrary and capricious and should be vacated.”

In an amicus brief filed in support of ISP's challenge to the Title II-based order, MMTC said the FCC had disregarded the harm Title II could do to broadband opportunities for unserved and underserved communities.

MMTC said it supported an open Internet, but said it did not think antiquated rules were the appropriate means to that end.

That is because it says Title II will discourage the investment and innovation needed to address "disparities in the affordability of broadband for low-income consumers."

The FCC for the first time is applying net neutrality rules, including Title II classification, to mobile broadband.

Given that diverse communities are disproportionately high users for mobile devices for broadband access, MMTC said that Title II "could serve to widen, rather than narrow, the digital divide for communities that have been heavily reliant on these services."

Among the FCC majority that approved the rules--the vote was 3-2--was Mignon Clyburn, the first African American female chair of the FCC. She has talked frequently about the fact that lower-income and minorities are more reliant on mobile for broadband access than the general population, but argued they also deserved "a robust experience on par with their wired peers," and thus supported "erasing the distinction."

It's complicated. US Telecom, which has challenged the FCC's justification for new Open Internet rules, has asked a federal court for permission to weigh in in support of the agency.

Specifically, the trade group, which represents telco iSPs, has asked permission of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to intervene on behalf of the FCC in the single challenge of the agency's Title II-based rules by Full Service Network, which argues the commission was not regulatory enough.

"Unlike all of the other petitioners that have filed petitions to date, these petitioners intend to argue that the FCC should have imposed even more regulation on providers of broadband Internet access service, including USTelecom’s member companies," US Telecom told the court in explaining why it would be taking the FCC's side.

If it gets intervenor status, it could file a brief arguing why the FCC should not have imposed more regs than it did. US Telecom made it clear it was only siding with the FCC against the call for more regs, not against any of the other petitions -- like its own -- that have been filed against Title II as an over, not under, reach.

Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler today declined to expound on what would or would not be in the FCC's Open Internet order, saying "nothing has been decided."

That included not commenting on whether the order would propose reclassifying Internet access under Title II, whether interconnection would be addressed and whether the new rules would include wireless, though Wheeler has signaled that and Title II reclassification are both likely.

The chairman's nonanswers came in a press conference following the FCC's monthly meeting on Jan. 29.

Wheeler said the order's specfics would become clearer when the FCC circulates a draft, which is targeted for Feb. 5, three weeks before a planned Feb. 26 vote. He added that the FCC would use "all the tools in the toolbox" to protect a free and open Internet for consumers.

He also declined comment on an effort by congressional Republicans to craft legislation to head off Title II reclassification. He said he respected the right of Congress to "write whatever rules they want to write" and said he was pleased that Congress was focusing "on the question of an Open Internet and the importance of there being an Open Internet." Both the House and Senate have already held net-neutrality hearings, tagged to the proposed legislation.

So far, no Democrats have signed on, according to Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), co-author of the draft, but he said this week they were still working on getting bipartisan buy-in.

Also in the nonanswer category for Wheeler was whether all the net-neutality rules would take effect immediately or be phased in.

Republican leaders have asked the FCC to publish the draft at the same time it circulates it. Earlier this week, Sen. Thune, one of those who had asked, said he had not gotten an answer.

Wheeler said legislators would get one, but that "the precedent from Democratic and Republican chairmen has always been that you have an internal discussion and then you release what the result of that vote is. And you don't change those decades of precedent overnight without following the procedures to review questions like that."

"I am going to obviously respond to them," Wheeler said, "but it is important to recognize that I fell strongly, as I know the [committee] chairmen do, about process." But he added, "We are certainly going to make sure the American people are informed about what we are talking about."