The CTIA on Tuesday became the latest U.S. industry group to file a lawsuit seeking to reverse the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) new net neutrality regulations.
"CTIA and the wireless industry have always supported an open Internet, which is why these rules will only chill investment and innovation and increase costs for consumers," claimed CTIA president and CEO Meredith Attwell Baker, in a statement.
New net neutrality rules were adopted by the FCC in late February and formally issued on 12 March. They prevent fixed and mobile broadband providers from blocking access to legal content, applications and services, and from striking commercial agreements with online service providers to prioritise their traffic.
To enforce the rules, the FCC has reclassified broadband access as a utility service under Title II of the Communications Act, subjecting service providers to much stricter controls governing the management of traffic on their networks.
"Instead of promoting greater industry investment in the connected world of tomorrow, the FCC opted to resuscitate a command-and-control regulatory regime," argued Baker on Tuesday.
The new net neutrality rules were published to the Federal Register on Monday, opening a 60-day window that allows groups that oppose them to file a legal challenge.
USTelecom, which counts major telcos and ISPs among its membership, was the first to do so.
Now it has been joined by CTIA, which like USTelecom has filed a suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in a bid to have the rules overturned.
"With today’s filing, CTIA seeks to protect the competitive mobile marketplace that thrived under a deregulatory framework for decades," said CTIA chairman Ron Smith. "The FCC’s new Internet rules are full service regulations that will harm mobile consumers and providers across the country, as well as our nation’s wireless future."
Unless the likes of CTIA and USTelecom are successful, the FCC’s new rules will come into effect on 12 June.
