More than thirty years ago, Congress gave local governments the power to impose \u201cfranchise fees\u201d and other regulations on cable television service.\u00a0 It was part of a broad framework for shared national and local authority over cable television in the 1984 \u201cCable Act,\u201d which laid the foundation for the cable (and eventually satellite) TV boom of the 1980s and beyond.<\/p>\n
By contrast, local governments have very limited power to tax or regulate the internet.\u00a0 Unlike television, which has a long tradition of serving independent local markets with discrete programming, options, and infrastructure, from the beginning it\u2019s been clear that the internet is inherently national and interstate and can only be effectively regulated at the federal level.\u00a0 That has been core federal policy for decades, as most recently expressed in the 2017 Restoring Internet Freedom Order<\/a>, which concluded that, \u201cregulation of broadband Internet access service should be governed principally by a uniform set of federal regulations, rather than by a patchwork that includes separate state and local requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n But recently, a number of local franchising authorities have tried to upend that federal policy and claim the right to impose local taxes and regulations on the internet by seizing on the fact that some broadband providers also offer cable television services.\u00a0 Now, the Federal Communications Commission (\u201cFCC\u201d) is rightly working to put a stop to this local government internet power grab \u2013 moving to make clear that the Cable Act only allows local franchising boards to tax and regulate cable companies based on their cable television operations.<\/p>\n If every local franchising board in the country can impose its own rules and fees on internet providers, the freewheeling and open internet we all enjoy today will slowly grind to a halt.\u00a0 The resulting cacophony of regulation will overwhelm operators, slowing down cyberspace and making it less reliable and less secure.\u00a0 It will drive away new investment needed to continue to achieve ever-increasing speeds users have come to take for granted.\u00a0 And it will confuse consumers who expect the internet to be a consistent experience everywhere they go.<\/p>\n