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The FCC’s Restoring Internet Freedom Order reclassified mobile broadband service from a commercial mobile radio service to a private mobile radio service, thereby eliminating common carrier regulation of the service. The reclassification is an incredible assertion: that the most important public mobile service of our time is classified under statute as a private mobile service. We analyze the relevant precedent from the 1940s through 2017. We find that the Order’s lack of consideration of the relevant precedent and technology undermines its interpretation of the statute on which it relies. The Order’s reversion to the 1994 definitions of public switched network and interconnected service ignores the growth of the public switched network to include the Internet. The Order’s conclusion that the public switched telephone network and the Internet are separate non-interconnected networks is factually wrong. Critically, when interpreting interconnection, the Order ignores the fact that in order for meaningful communication to occur, the users’ devices and subscribed services must be compatible. A proper interpretation of relevant statute and precedent leads to the opposite conclusion of the Order, that mobile broadband service is a commercial mobile service. This finding lays the foundation for reinstatement of net neutrality protections on mobile broadband service.

The discussion of the need to establish a 'right to the internet', ongoing now for over thirty years, has not brought about a clear resolution. Despite the growing importance of online services to both the economy and social life, there is no consensus on the limits of such a right, nor on the need to define it at all—not to mention controversy over its inclusion in the catalogue of fundamental rights. However, the discussion about the right to internet access in the context of the EU legal system now seems obsolete. This is so, because—not through the direct modernisation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights but as part of new telecommunications legislation—a new subjective right, called the right to open internet, has emerged. The aim of this Article is to clarify the content of this right and its relationship to the principle of network neutrality. Against this background, recent judgments of the Court of Justice will be examined and discussed. Although closely related to the telecommunications market, these judgments may serve as a starting point for further discussion on the meaning of the right to open internet in the EU legal system, including its relation to the protection of human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does a fast lane on the internet affect the entry of online content providers? To answer this question, I provide empirical evidence that connection speed greatly influences consumption of online video and that changes in speed therefore directly impact the entry of video content providers. I also present a framework to think about the incentives of broadband providers to offer a fast lane with access fees which has direct profits effects as well as indirect demand effects. Finally, by combining the empirical model with the theoretical framework in a counterfactual analysis, I show that a fast lane with access fees only increases entry for content providers with high fixed costs of content provision. Using a novel data set on household consumption of online content and broadband penetration in local markets to estimate a structural model of industry demand and supply, this paper is the first to provide empirical evidence on the industry-wide effects of breaking net neutrality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay aims to analyze the legislation regarding Internet access in Brazil, specially the laws that regulate and protect one of its major characteristics: net neutrality. Through a wide and systematic view of the Federal Constitution of 1988, we search for constitutional legal standards which, alongside regular laws, could provide the protection and integrity of net neutrality. To achieve this goal, we begin an analysis of the nature of net neutrality. Also, we critically observe recent developments on the matter which happened in late 2017, when anti-neutrality measures were adopted in the United States. The article tries to shed a light on the matter and provide awareness regarding the importance of net neutrality in the context of a free, open and global Internet, which is a necessary means to enjoy human rights in nowadays digital context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the effect of sponsored data when Internet service providers (ISPs) compete for subscribers and content providers (CPs) compete for a share of the bandwidth usage by customers. Our model is of a full information, leader-follower game. ISPs lead and set sponsorship prices. CPs then make the binary decision of sponsoring or not sponsoring their content on the ISPs. Lastly, based on both of these, users make a two-part decision-choose the ISP to subscribe to, and amount of data to consume from each CPs through the chosen ISP. User consumption is determined by a utility maximization framework, sponsorship decision is determined by a non-cooperative game between CPs, and ISPs set their prices to maximize their profit in response to prices set by competing ISP. We analyze the dynamics of the prices set by ISPs, the sponsorship decisions of CPs, the market structure therein, and surpluses of the ISPs, CPs, users. This is the first analysis of the effect sponsored data in the presence of ISP competition. We show that inter-ISP competition does not inhibit ISPs from extracting a significant fraction of CP surplus, leaving CPs no better off (and sometimes worse off) as compared to the scenario where data sponsoring is disallowed. Moreover, ISPs often have an incentive to significantly skew the CP marketplace in favor of the most profitable CP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Net neutrality has played critical issues in internet-based businesses, as it may stop Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from discriminating against certain legal internet contents, platforms, or services. This study argued that net neutrality has a strong relationship with economic democracy as the constitutional basis of the Indonesian economy. This study examined net neutrality and considered its possible adoption in Indonesia under economic democracy by justifying economic democracy required the state to build an inclusive economy as per political economy theory. It used a socio-legal method through an interdisciplinary study of law and political economy with conceptual and comparative approaches. The study showed that the idea of the internet as a level playing field was founding net neutrality. For instance, in the United States and across different Global South countries, net neutrality relied on three orders of no blocking, no throttling, and no paid prioritization, which provided equal access for everyone to create their opportunities. At this point, economic democracy and net neutrality made their cross-cut. Like net neutrality, a discriminatory action against a content provider violated economic democracy, where policy-makers formulated economic policies to enable a level playing field for economic actors. Minimum barriers to entering the market might create such a level playing field. Without net neutrality, ISPs could carry out arbitrary actions and abuse of power for business interests. This study concluded that the adoption of net neutrality into formal regulation created a positive climate of innovation in the digital business ecosystem in Indonesia.

Twentieth-century communications law was built on the assumption of scarcity-radio spectrum as a scarce natural resource and telephone networks as a natural monopoly. Scarcity justified both rate regulation and content regulation of the services offered over these communications resources. Telephone networks were subject to the nondiscrimination rules of common carriage, and the Supreme Court in Red Lion Broadcasting v. FCC famously upheld the “fairness doctrine,” which required that both sides of public issues be discussed fairly over broadcast media, expressly on the rationale that the scarcity of the airwaves justified content-based regulation under the First Amendment. As the century drew to a close, however, technological developments cast doubt on the assumption of scarcity and, therefore, much of the legal framework of communications law. In this chapter, I explain how both incumbent and startup providers reacted to this seeming technological abundance with acts aimed at creating or re-creating economic scarcity97strongly resisting encroachments on exclusive franchises or collusively slowing or halting the rollout of alternative networks97and how communications law has failed to keep up. It is widely acknowledged that our current statutory law is maladapted to modern technology, but in this work I recast the ongoing fights over net neutrality, affordable broadband, and platform speech regulation in terms of scarcity and abundance and argue that Red Lion is still with us in spirit97communications law should address the sources and effects of economic. I sketch out what such regulation might start to look like and conclude with some thoughts about what this story means for the central thesis of this volume.