American communications giant Verizon has accused the Federal Communications Commission of overstepping the mark with regards to its new broadband and Internet rules.
After the Federal Communications Commission approved new rules relating to the control of Internet traffic last month, many industry experts predicted that there would be many challenges to the regulations that were brought in. The regulations are designed to stop Internet service providers from treating different types of web traffic differently, and blocking bandwidth hungry applications and sites to prevent congestion on their networks.
These predictions now seem to be coming true already, after it was announced that communications giant Verizon had filed a case with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The company has taken the FCC to court over the new rules, accusing it of overstepping its authority with the new regulations.
Some officials have said that this court has a history of backing the big communications giants over the FCC, and it was in fact the same court that ruled in favour of Comcast Corp last year, after ruling that the FCC did not have the authority to stop the company from blocking bandwidth hungry applications on its network.
In a statement Verizon said: “We believe this assertion of authority goes well beyond any authority provided by Congress, and creates uncertainty for the communications industry, innovators, investors and consumers.” However, the FCC said that the rules had not even been published in the Federal Register yet, so Verizon’s move was premature.
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Source – Reuters