Anatomy of Defective Legislation: The No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act, H.R. 2666

             The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill that would prohibit the FCC from regulating Internet Service Provider rates.  While one surely can appreciate the merits of such legislation, House Republicans have created a remarkably flawed document.

            The drafters do not seem to understand that the Communications Act, which the bill would amend, vests the FCC with jurisdiction in Section 208 to oversee “charges, classifications, regulations or practices.”  H.R. 2666 creates the kind of ambiguity that allows the FCC to remedy through its preferred statutory interpretation, because one person’s rate regulation is another’s lawful regulation of charges, classifications and practices.

            The Supreme Court has created something called the Chevron Doctrine that creates a model for assessing whether courts should defer to regulatory agency legislative interpretation.  While agencies like the FCC must apply the clear meaning of an unambiguous law, court must defer to reasonable agency interpretations when the applicable law is ambiguous.

            On its face, H.R. 2666 is ambiguous, because one could readily argue that this bill does not repeal Sections in the Communications Act that authorize the FCC to investigate complaints about carrier billing and treatment of information about customer network usage (Sec. 222) as well as issues that affect out of pocket cost, but can be deemed something other than a rate.

            In the Internet ecosystem, ISPs often negotiate agreements that do not involve rates and even the exchange of money.  Instead they use customer information as a marketable currency of great value to advertisers.  Data mining configures and analyses ISP subscriber behavior that can be monetized, but not converted into applicable rates and tariffs.