Information Services or Telecommunications Services?
Steve Goodman has been practicing telecommunications law since 1983, when he began working at the Federal Communications Commission. He now represents a wide variety of clients, including telecommunications equipment manufacturers, satellite service providers and international carriers.
Over the last thirty years, the Internet has gone from a largely academic network using 56 kbps dial-up modems to become a high-speed, robust infrastructure that is now an integral part of everyone's lives used for work, entertainment, education, civic engagement, and healthcare. For much of those thirty years, the FCC has grappled with how to regulate Internet access service
The FCC has toggled between treating Internet access service as an information service subject to minimal federal regulation (and preemption of state regulation) and treating it as a telecommunications service subject to the FCC's Title II regulations, along with specific rules to protect net neutrality.
This toggling occurred once again with the FCC's recent Open Internet order, and given the criticality of the Internet, it is important that regulators, service providers, investors, and anyone who is impacted by the Internet understand what the FCC did
The FCC's Open Internet Order, released on May 7, 2024, is a behemoth. This decision, including Appendices, separate statements and dissents from the Commissioners, totals five hundred ten pages and thirty-three hundred eighty-one footnotes. Reading through all that is not for the faint of heart