By Matt Murchison and Alex Stout
Last week, the FCC announced that Chairman Tom Wheeler had circulated a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on implementing Section 222’s privacy obligations for broadband providers. Section 222’s requirements were originally crafted for telephone companies, and were first applied to broadband providers as part of the 2015 Open Internet Order, which reclassified broadband providers as telecommunications carriers. However, the FCC expressly forbore from applying to broadband providers the rules it had adopted over the years implementing Section 222 in the telephone context. The upcoming NPRM, which the full Commission will vote on at its March 31 Open Meeting, will, for the first time, propose specific requirements implementing Section 222’s privacy obligations in the broadband context.
The FCC’s fact sheet about the NPRM reiterates the three guiding principles that the Chairman has identified in recent weeks—choice, transparency, and security—and provides some new details on the specific proposals under consideration.