Comcast Challenges FCC's Authority To Order Neutrality

Comcast fired back at the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday in its long-running duel with the agency. The cable-TV and Internet service provider filed suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C.

The filing is the result of a FCC hearing last month in which Comcast was sanctioned for throttling back the broadband speed of customers using the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file-sharing application. The FCC ordered Comcast to provide plans for equitably managing its bandwidth and to make its network-management policies public.

Comcast’s View

Comcast had already agreed to the FCC’s demands and rapidly put into place a management program that capped home Internet users — regardless of the application used — at 250GB per month. The cap was widely reported in media outlets, bill inserts to Comcast customers, and banner announcements on Comcast’s Web site.

The suit is not about the nature of the commission’s sanction, but whether the FCC has the authority to make such a ruling.

“We filed this appeal in order to protect our legal rights and to challenge the basis on which the commission found that Comcast violated federal policy in the absence of preexisting legally enforceable standards or rules,” Comcast said. “We continue to recognize that the commission has jurisdiction over Internet service providers and may regulate them in appropriate circumstances and in accordance with appropriate procedures. However, we are compelled to appeal because we strongly believe that, in this particular case, the commission’s action was legally inappropriate and its findings were not justified by the record.”

The FCC’s Position

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has said the agency could not have a specific guideline in place regarding network management before the Comcast hearing, since the commission wants to keep the Internet as unregulated as possible. The FCC also believes, according to Martin, that the existing Broadband Policy Statement…