26 words of Shel Silverstein’s children’s song, “Some kind of help is the kind of help we all can do without.” For our purposes, of course, the question is whether, as the Alamo-Berninger brief argues, the section of the statute invoked by the Commission under Title II, namely § 201(b), authorizes the ban, or, more precisely, whether the Commission has offered any reasonable interpretation of § 201(b) that would encompass the ban. A number of points by way of background: First, nothing in the Order suggests that the paid prioritization ban allows any exception for rate distinctions based on differing costs of transmission, time-sensitivity of the material transmitted, or congestion levels at the time of transmission, all variables historically understood to justify distinctions in rates. Alfred E. Kahn, The Economics of Regulation (1988), at 63 (different costs), 63-64 (different elasticities of demand, as would be reflected in time sensitivity), 88-94 (congestion). The AlamoBerninger brief cites the FCC chairman’s observation in Congress, “There is nothing in Title II that prohibits paid prioritization,” Hearing before the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology of the United States House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Technology of the United States House Commission,” Video at 44:56 (May 20, 2014), available at http://go.usa.gov/3aUmY, but that need not detain us. More important, general principles of public utility rate regulation have always allowed reasonable rate distinctions, with many factors determining reasonableness. Kahn, The Economics of Regulation, at 63 (noting that, “from the very beginning, regulated companies have been permitted to discriminate in the economic sense, charging different rates for various services”). But the ban adopted by the Commission prohibits rate differentials for priority handling regardless of factors that would render them reasonable under the above

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