The entire broadband industry is suing California against the Net Neutrality Law

Today, four lobby groups representing the broadband industry have sued California to stop the new law of neutrality of the state network.

The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California by the CTIA lobby, the cable industry lobby, NCTA, the USTelecom telecommunications operators lobby and the American Cable Association, which represents small and medium sized cable companies. Together, these four lobby groups represent the largest mobile and home Internet providers in the United States and hundreds of smaller ISPs. Comcast, Charter, AT & T, Verizon, US T-Mobile, Sprint, Cox, Frontier and CenturyLink are among the group members.

"This case presents a classic example of unconstitutional state regulation," the complaint said. California's law on internet neutrality "aimed to thwart and undermine federal law by imposing [broadband] the same regulations that the Federal Communications Commission specifically repealed in its 2018 Restore the order of freedom on the Internet. "

ISPs claim that California law unacceptably governs interstate commerce. "[I]It's impossible or unworkable for an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to allow BIAS to distinguish traffic that travels only in California from traffic that crosses state borders, "said the lobby group.

The groups asked the court to declare that state law "is pre-empted and unconstitutional and that it should [California] to apply or give effect to it ".

California is now facing two major lawsuits challenging the internet neutrality law signed on Sunday by Gov. Jerry Brown. The Trump Administration's Justice Department has also sued California and is seeking a preliminary injunction that would impede the enforcement of the law. Net neutrality rules in California are expected to come into effect on January 1, 2019.

Several lawsuits will affect the right of the state

Like the GM, broadband advocacy groups contend that the Federal Communications Commission's repeal of federal rules on network neutrality is pre-emptive. The FCC and the Department of Justice say that California 's law on Internet neutrality is at odds with the federal government' s policy of broadband deregulation. California argues that the FCC has waived its regulatory power over broadband and therefore can not prevent states from regulating the sector.

Ultimately, the question of whether the pre-emption of state laws by the FCC is valid will be decided in the context of a different prosecution pending before the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal District Circuit of the United States. Columbia. In this lawsuit, state attorneys general and other parties sued the FCC to reverse the repeal of the federal network neutrality rules and the pre-emption of state laws.

But the US District Court in California must rule on preliminary injunction applications from the DOJ and lobbies. Because of this, the US District Court will decide if California can enforce its law as long as the US Court of Appeals case is pending.

California's new law prohibits ISPs from blocking or restricting legitimate traffic and charging royalties from websites or online services to provide or prioritize their traffic to consumers. The law also bans cap exemptions from paying data (referred to as "zero rates") and indicates that Internet service providers can not attempt to evade the protections of internet neutrality by slowing traffic at the points of interconnection of the network.

The ban on California-imposed tax-free status would force AT & T and Verizon to stop charging companies for data cap exemptions. California law also prohibits the tax exemption of certain applications in one category of content, but not in others. For example, an ISP might assign a zero rate to all video services, but would not be allowed to assign a zero rate to certain services while comparing other video services to data caps. The resetting of DirecTV's streaming service by AT & T may therefore violate California law, as AT & T does not provide the same data cap exemptions for all other video services.