By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 6-14-16

In a big and sweeping victory for the FCC, the Obama Administration and FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has let stand the FCC’s new Open Internet order.

That includes the definition of Internet service providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act; the application of the rules to mobile broadband providers; and the finding that the FCC’s order was neither unconstitutional nor violated procedural safeguards.

“Three separate groups of petitioners, consisting primarily of broadband providers and their associations, challenge the Order, arguing that the Commission lacks statutory authority to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service, that even if the Commission has such authority its decision was arbitrary and capricious, that the Commission impermissibly classified mobile broadband as a commercial mobile service, that the Commission impermissibly forbore from certain provisions of Title II, and that some of the rules violate the First Amendment,” said the court, adding that it was denying all those challenges.  » Read More