51
III.
Having thus rejected petitioners’ arguments against
reclassification, we turn to US Telecom’s challenges to the
Commission’s regulation of interconnection arrangements—
arrangements that broadband providers make with other
networks to exchange traffic in order to ensure that their end
users can access edge provider content anywhere on the
internet. Broadband providers have such arrangements with
backbone networks, as well as with certain edge providers,
such as Netflix, that connect directly to broadband provider
networks. In the Order, the Commission found that regulation
of interconnection arrangements was necessary to ensure
broadband providers do not “use terms of interconnection to
disadvantage edge providers” or “prevent[] consumers from
reaching the services and applications of their choosing.”
2015 Open Internet Order, 30 FCC Rcd. at 5694 ¶ 205.
Several commenters, the Commission pointed out, had
emphasized “the potential for anticompetitive behavior on the
part of broadband Internet access service providers that serve
as gatekeepers to the edge providers . . . seeking to deliver
Internet traffic to the broadband providers’ end users.” Id. at
5691 ¶ 200.
As authority for regulating interconnection arrangements,
the Commission relied on Title II. “Broadband Internet
access service,” it explained, “involves the exchange of traffic
between a . . . broadband provider and connecting networks,”
since “[t]he representation to retail customers that they will be
able to reach ‘all or substantially all Internet endpoints’
necessarily includes the promise to make the interconnection
arrangements necessary to allow that access.” Id. at 5693–94
¶ 204. Because the “same data is flowing between the end
user and edge consumer,” the end user necessarily
experiences any discriminatory treatment of the edge
provider, the Commission reasoned, making interconnection
Select target paragraph3
Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents