Prometheus 6

There's never been a monopoly that kept prices low…except AT&T, which brings me to my second point: there's never been a case where deregulation of an industry resulted in lower prices…except the airline industry, and how often does THAT benefit you? Two, maybe three times a year?

Anyway…

Supreme Court to Hear Case on Cable as Internet Carrier
By LINDA GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 - The Supreme Court on Friday stepped into one of the most heated debates over the future of the Internet: how to classify high-speed Internet cable service for purposes of federal regulation and, ultimately, for the question of whether competing Internet service providers are entitled to use the cable companies' networks to reach their subscribers.

The justices accepted appeals filed by the Bush administration and the cable industry from a federal appeals court decision that struck down large portions of a deregulatory order issued by the Federal Communications Commission in 2002. The order freed companies that provide cable modem service of the obligation that federal law places on providers of "telecommunications services" to open their networks to their competitors.

The F.C.C. had decided after two years of study that broadband cable service was an "information service" and not a "telecommunications service" - categories that in the commission's view are mutually exclusive under the 1996 Telecommunications Act. By placing cable on the "information" side, the commission freed it from the obligations the law places on carriers like traditional phone companies, which must permit interconnection with other carriers.

But the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit disagreed, ruling last year that cable broadband service was a hybrid that could not be freed by administrative decree from its common-carrier obligations.

An initial question in the Supreme Court appeals is whether, regardless of the merits of the dispute, the appeals court should have given greater deference to the views of the F.C.C.