Verizon Communications announced Thursday that it has filed a legal challenge to the Net-neutrality plan adopted by the Federal Communications Commission. The company said it is “deeply concerned by the FCC’s assertion of broad authority for sweeping new regulation of broadband networks and the Internet itself.”
Approved last month, the FCC plan requires network providers to treat all content the same, without favoring some kinds of content which could, for example, compete with the provider’s own offerings. Despite the legal move, the company said it is still “committed to preserving an open Internet,” adding that it has worked extensively with “all players in the Internet and communications space to shape policies that ensure an open Internet.”
Same Court as Comcast Ruling
Verizon’s suit was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. This is the same court that ruled last spring against the FCC order that Comcast refrain from blocking a file-sharing application that could offer movies competing with Comcast’s. At the time, the court said the FCC didn’t have the authority it cited, and the recently approved Net-neutrality plan was intended, at least in part, to address that ruling.
Verizon’s argument in its lawsuit similarly rests on the idea that the FCC doesn’t have the authority. Michael E. Glover, the company’s senior vice president and deputy general counsel, told news media that the FCC’s “assertion of authority goes well beyond any authority provided by Congress.” In fact, Verizon has asked for the same panel of judges that decided the Comcast case.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has said that he expected one or more court challenges, and that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 gave the FCC the authority to carry out the new plan.
The FCC’s argument for its legal authority appears to rest on instructions in the 1996 law that…