Members of the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA) have written the FCC in support of chairman Ajit Pai's proposal to roll back Title II classification of ISPs as common carriers, so long as strong rules remain under a different legal authority.
The 70 members signing on to the letter said that Title II has boosted compliance burdens and regulatory risk via heavy-handed regs they say are rife with uncertainty.
But they also say they support maintaining rules. "We support retention of ‘bright line’ rules that prohibit blocking and throttling of traffic, and we oppose paid prioritization," they wrote. "We also support requirements to clearly disclose service terms to customers” and “do not sell our customers’ browsing data or other private information to third parties.”
Pai has asked for input on whether those rules are still needed.
The groups agree with Pai that the Open Internet order's "general conduct standard" should be eliminated, calling it "a 'vague and open-ended catch-all' that potentially subjects legitimate business practices to FCC investigations and regulations."
But they also want the FCC to keep in mind that, whatever it does, small businesses face "disproportionate" compliance burdens, while their larger competitors can better deal with the costs of one-size-fits-all regs.
