FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION WASHINGTON OFFICE OF THE CHAIRMAN The Honorable Zoe Lofgren U.S. House of Representatives 1401 Longworth House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 Dear Congresswoman Lofgren: October 17, 2014 Thank you for your follow-up letter on the need for the Commission to restore rules to protect the Open Internet. I continue to share your concerns. Since the D.C. Circuit's decision in January, there are no rules in place to prevent a broadband provider from engaging in conduct harmful to Internet openness, such as blocking a consumer from accessing a requested website or degrading the performance of an innovative Internet application. The Open Internet is too important to leave consumers and innovators unprotected. We must reinstate strong, enforceable Open Internet rules, and we must do so with dispatch. As you know, the Commission's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking ("Notice") asked a fundamental question: What is the right public policy to ensure that the Internet remains open? And we sought comment on the best way to achieve that fundamental policy goal. The response has been remarkable. As you note, over 3. 7 million comments were filed by the close of the comment period on September 15, 2014. This record-setting level of public engagement reflects the vital nature of Internet openness and the importance of our getting the answer right in this proceeding. Your letter touches on key issues in the Notice, and it will be included in the record and considered as a pmi of the Commission's review. In particular, you present a number of considerations for basing the legal authority for Open Internet rules primarily on Title II of the Communications Act, with additional reliance on authority granted under Section 706. The Notice specifically asks questions about these approaches, including whether the Commission should revisit its classification of broadband service as an information service or whether we should separately identify and classify under Title II a service that "broadband providers ... furnish to edge providers." For approaches involving a Title II classification, we also ask about how our forbearance authority should be used to tailor Title II obligations to achieve our public policy goals. Since the Notice, filings for the record by some pmiies- such as AOL, Mozilla, the Center for Democracy and Technology, a coalition of library and higher education associations, Rep. Henry Waxman, and others- have suggested additional approaches that, as you suggest, would combine aspects of both our Section 706 and Title II authority. We are looking closely at these approaches as well. This reflects what I have said many times, most recently before the House Committee on Small Business: All options remain on the table, including Title II.- Page 2-The Honorable Zoe Lofgren Our Notice, of course, is just the beginning. We held Open Internet Roundtable discussions last month, focused on the scope of our Open Internet rules and on whether and how they should apply to mobile broadband, including the application of reasonable network management to wireless technologies. I was also pleased to pruiicipate in Roundtable discussions about how to tailor our rules to achieve our policy goals, enforcement, technology, economic theory, and, most recently, legal authority. Through these events, we have heard views of experts on all sides of the issue, along with real-time input from the public. At the same time, a cross-Commission staff team is hard at work reviewing the many comments filed over the last four months. Our efforts will ensure that all views are taken into account as the Commission looks to adopt sustainable rules that achieve our shared Open Internet goals. From the outset of this critically important undertaking, I have been and remain committed to exercising the Commission's authority, as needed, to ensure the Internet remains free and open for decades to come. I look forward to continued engagement with you as the proceeding moves forward to a successful conclusion. Tom Wheeler