Court Vacates FCC’s Order on Comcast and Net Neutrality
Posted by Jesse Ward on Wednesday, April 7, 2010 · 
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In a landmark decision yesterday, a federal appeals court ruled that the FCC lacks the authority to regulate network management practices, throwing into doubt the agency’s status as watchdog of the Web.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia vacated the FCC’s 2008 decision, concluding that the commission did not have the authority to order Comcast to stop throttling peer-to-peer traffic in the name of network management. The FCC lacked “any statutorily mandated responsibility” to enforce network neutrality rules, wrote Judge David Tatel.
The commission initially sanctioned Comcast for violating the agency’s open Internet guidelines, which were created to compel broadband providers to treat all network traffic equally. In a 3 to 2 vote, the FCC found that Comcast had improperly slowed traffic to the BitTorrent file-sharing service, and urged the company to halt the practice. It did not impose a fine.
Comcast appealed the FCC ruling, maintaining that the order was outside the scope of the agency’s authority. The court agreed.
“For a variety of substantive and procedural reasons those provisions cannot support its exercise of ancillary authority over Comcast’s network management practices,” the court wrote in its 3-0 decision. “We therefore grant Comcast’s petition for review and vacate the challenged order.”
The ruling throws the FCC’s authority into question, and could prompt the creation of new rules or laws to more concretely establish the agency as a regulator of Internet services. The commission also may elect to solve the jurisdictional problem by reclassifying broadband service.
Reuters has a good overview of the issue.
For more analysis, stay tuned to NTCA’s Washington Report.
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