Consumers need to be protected from major ISPs...

Consumers need to be protected from major ISPs and the FCC can do that best by reclassifying broadband as a Title II service, Consumers Union said in comments filed at the FCC that were posted Tuesday. CU responded to an FCC public notice on potential new net neutrality rules. “The recently struck-down nondiscrimination and no-blocking rules leave ISPs free to experiment with anticompetitive and anti-consumer practices that are contrary to the longstanding principles underlying the Open Internet rules,” CU said (http://bit.ly/1ffs1J0). The FCC should not rely on its authority under Section 706 of the Communications Act to impose new rules, the group said. “We believe that Section 706 is not the best path forward to restoring the protections against discrimination and blocking. We are concerned that the provision, which gives the FCC the ability to use its expert judgment to ‘encourage the deployment on a reasonable and timely basis of advanced telecommunications capability to all Americans’ is too general, lacks meaningful mechanisms to deter harmful conduct by ISPs, and provides little clarity about the extent to which a broadband ISP can interfere with traffic before it is deemed to have infringed upon consumers’ rights."