Reclassifying Won't Help in Efforts to Ban Paid Prioritization, AT&T Tells Leahy
AT&T warned Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., that reclassifying broadband as a Communications Act Title II telecom service would not give regulators the tools to ban paid prioritization, as some net neutrality advocates have recommended. Leahy has not…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
specifically called for Title II reclassification but has long targeted paid prioritization deals and introduced legislation that would ban them. If the FCC reclassifies, “any attempt to ban paid prioritization would run headlong into decades of Title II precedent that make clear that generally available differentiated service options, including paid prioritization, are allowed,” wrote Tim McKone, AT&T executive vice president-federal relations, in a response dated Thursday. “Thus the Commission would be unable to prevent any Internet service provider that did decide to offer paid prioritization from doing so.” AT&T “has no plans to offer such capabilities to third parties,” McKone assured Leahy, referring to the possibility of entering “into arrangements with third parties to prioritize traffic over a consumer’s last mile broadband Internet connection without the knowledge and direction of the end user.” AT&T said that not all prioritization deals pose risks to consumers. Leahy had requested earlier this month that AT&T and other major ISPs pledge to forgo paid prioritization deals (see 1410230041).