SANTA MONICA, CA – The Federal Communication Commission should protect consumer privacy and regulate connections between the Internet and so-called “edge providers,” like Google, when the agency begins regulating broadband service like a public utility, Consumer Watchdog said today.

An FCC fact sheet about Chairman Tom Wheeler’s plans to reclassify broadband service said he intends to give the Commission authority “allowing it to address issues that may arise in the exchange of traffic between mass-market broadband providers and edge providers.”

Google lobbied the FCC, according to a filing last week, saying “the Commission should not attempt to classify a ‘service that broadband providers make available to ‘edge providers.’”

“Google is too big a goliath to escape FCC scrutiny of how it connects to the Internet,” said John M. Simpson, Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project director. “Google is two-faced. They’ve actively cultivated the public image of supporting net neutrality, but when the new rules would directly affect them, Google works behind the scenes to kill them.”

The Commission is expected to approve new rules at its meeting Thursday that would ensure net neutrality – the idea that all data traveling on the Internet is treated equally. Broadband service would be reclassified as a telecommunications service under Title II of the Communications Act and regulated like the phone company.  The FCC would “forbear” from enforcing provisions off the Act that are no longer in the public interest because of changes in technology.

Read the FCC factsheet here:  https://www.fcc.gov/document/chairman-wheeler-proposes-new-rules-protecting-open-internet

Read Google’s filing about it lobbying here: http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/comment/view?id=60001019059

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