Telecommunications
In the telecommunications regulation context in the United States, telecommunications carriers are regulated by the Federal Communications Commission under title II of the Communications Act of 1934.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 made extensive revisions to the "Title II" provisions regarding common carriers and repealed the judicial 1982 AT&T consent decree (often referred to as the "modification of final judgment" or "MFJ") that effectuated the breakup of AT&T's Bell System. Further, The Act gives telephone companies the option of providing video programming on a common carrier basis or as a conventional cable television operator. If it chooses the former, the telephone company will face less regulation but will also have to comply with FCC regulations requiring what the Act refers to as "open video systems." The Act generally bars, with certain exceptions including most rural areas, acquisitions by telephone companies of more than a 10 percent interest in cable operators (and vice versa) and joint ventures between telephone companies and cable systems serving the same areas.
Computer networks (for example, the Internet) that are built on top of telecommunications networks are Information Services or Enhanced Services, and are generally regulated under title I of the Communications Act (other networks, such as cable video networks or wireless taxi dispatch networks, are neither telecommunications carrier networks nor information services).
Internet Service Providers have argued against being classified as a "common carrier" and, so far, have managed to do so. The argument of ISPs against common carrier classification has largely conflated "telecommunications carriers" with "common carriers," assuming that if they were labeled as "common carriers," they would be regulated under Title II of the Communications Act by the FCC. This is incorrect; as noted above, a firm can be a common carrier without being a telecommunications carrier. The FCC proceeding that established that Internet networks are not telecommunications carriers is the Computer Inquiries. A later FCC report, IN RE FEDERAL-STATE JOINT BOARD ON UNIVERSAL SERVICE, Report to Congress, 13 FCC Rcd. 11501 (1998), reviewed this policy (this report was not an order and did not have the effect of regulatory law - it is however, an excellent capture of FCC policy at that time).
The policy of the FCC has evolved. Traditionally, an Internet network information service would acquire its telecommunications needs from a telecommunications carrier. It was an Internet network layered on top of a telecommunications network. Pursuant to recent FCC decisions, Internet DSL and Internet Cable services are now considered combined as one "information service." There is no telecommunications carrier service underneath for other ISPs to use. This has resulted in a transformation of the ISP market. Previously, thousands of ISPs had access to the telephone network. Now, with no broadband telecommunications carrier service available, there are generally only two Internet broadband providers in a residential market: the cable Internet provider and the DSL Internet provider.
Because ISPs are no longer prohibited from discriminating among different types of content under common carrier law, Internet providers may charge additional fees for certain kinds of services, such as Virtual Private Networks. Some network neutrality supporters advocate reclassifying all ISPs as common carriers in order to prevent content discrimination.
Internet networks are, however, already treated like common carriers in many respects. ISPs are largely immune from liability for third party content. The Good Samaritan provision of the Communications Decency Act established immunity from liability for third party content on grounds of libel or slander. The DMCA established that ISPs which comply with DMCA would not be liable for the copyright violations of third parties on their network.
Read more about this topic: Common Carrier