Net Neutrality a New Movement

Net Neutrality – A New Movement

On January 16th, Fred Wilson wrote an excellent post titled The Fight For Net Neutrality. In it, he describes the various efforts to repeal the FCC’s Title II order and the subsequent effort to get new Title III (and Title IV) rules passed. Fred says that the current Title II effort is “a new low” and attributes much of the political resistance to it to existing regulatory structures. Fred also points to recent actions by some Silicon Valley companies, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, as evidence that the Title II issue is no longer a partisan one.

I was an active participant in the effort to repeal the FCC’s Title II order. I wrote a blog post in support of it in November 2011. When I reflect on my involvement, it was the single largest legislative activity I participated in in 2011. The effort culminated in a bill (H.R. 1981 – Protecting Telecommunications Companies from Unreasonable Discrimination Act of 2011 – titled the Fairness to Connections Act of 2011) that was introduced on January 24th, 2011, immediately after the FCC’s Title II Order expired. The bill, while not perfect, was close.

On January 24th, 2011, the House voted 241 – 163 along party lines. The Senate voted 98 – 4 along party lines. The final tally was 48 Democrats for (48) Republicans for (47).

Fred and I both agreed that this was an extremely low threshold to achieve. The effort required a huge effort on the part of the leadership team to get the bill out of committee and onto the floor. The effort also required the support of at least 20 Democrats in the House and 48 Republicans in the Senate. In addition, we had to get the support from at least one independent, outside spending group. As a result, we are optimistic that we achieved the above threshold of support.

In the case of the House, we accomplished this by a simple majority vote. In the Senate we needed a simple majority vote. Fortunately, we did this in the presence of several of our members, who were extremely engaged in the effort. There was plenty of support from Democrats in the House as well as some from the leadership team. There were also plenty of Democrats in the Senate who felt strongly that the FCC’s Title II Order was too onerous and too onerous a rule.

We are optimistic that the effort will continue to gain momentum in Congress. We look forward to seeing what the final legislative text (if any) from the FCC will be.