Question

What are the pros and cons of classifying internet service providers as Title II common carriers? Should we? Think economically and be specific.

Answer should be between 2-3 paragraphs. Thank you for your help!

Answer 1

Common Carrier protection of ISPs is important, but best done by NOT applying Title II. Title II is 80 years old, even the last major amendments are nearly 20 years old at this point. It's over 100 pages of administrative gobbledygook with every nuanced passage subject to litigation and interpretation, bringing the whole corpus that to be ingested and understood into the tens of thousands of pages. To be a Title II "common carrier", you're not only provided protections, but you're also required to comply with restrictions - many of which would be somewhere between hideously inconvenient and disastrous for ISPs.

The current rules in play have ISPs, WiFi operators, and wireless IP carriers operating as "information services providers" - they're in a fairly unregulated space. The FCC intent at the time of making those rulings was to encourage unfettered competition and not bog people down with regulatory compliance for something that they didn't have any idea what was going to become, nor how it should be regulated.