Microsoft, Google lobby for strong net neutrality rules

Microsoft and Google pleaded with US regulators yesterday to preserve strong net neutrality rules, while AT&T Inc and Comcast Corp supported weaker oversight and said Congress needed to settle the issue that had been hanging fire for over a decade.

According to the tech giants, the broadband providers were trying to sway the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which was moving toward scrapping the rules against interfering with web traffic.

Monday was a deadline for comments on the FCC proposal of Republican chairman Ajit Pai entitled ''Restoring Internet Freedom,'' which already had attracted over 8 million comments.

The rules had been laid down by the Obama-era, Democratic-led FCC that barred providers from blocking or slowing data to hinder rivals, for instance or favour affiliated services, or from setting up ''fast lanes'' that would cost more.

Under the new proposals, announced in April, the FCC would give up claims to its strong legal authority to enforce the rules. The chairman had also asked whether the FCC needed to retain the ban on paid fast lanes.

For broadband providers, the change would remove a threat of intrusive rate regulation with the dilution of the FCC's authority.

Meanwhile, Comcast wrote in the opening of its 161-page it filed with the FCC yesterday: ''The Commission should avoid subjecting the broadband industry to onerous utility-style regulation under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended (the 'Act'),'' Comcast wrote in the opening of the 161-page comment.

''Such regulation is entirely unnecessary and imposes substantial costs that undermine investment and innovation in the broadband ecosystem and undercut efforts to bridge the digital divide in this country.''

Echoing Comcast's stance on the issue AT&T said in a statement that it supported an open internet, not one enforced by FCC regulations.

''AT&T has supported an open internet as well as baseline requirements to ensure an open internet is protected without the regulatory baggage that comes with Title II,'' a spokesperson said in an emailed statement about its filing.

''We continue to support such requirements, and we continue to oppose Title II as an unprecedented regulatory overreach for which there was no economic or marketplace justification.''