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''National Cable & Telecommunications Association et al. v. Brand X Internet Services et al.'', 545 U.S. 967 (2005), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared in a 6–3 decision that the administrative law principle of ''Chevron'' deference to statutory interpretations by administrative agencies tasked with executing the statute trumped the precedents of the United States Courts of Appeals unless the Court of Appeals found that the statute was "unambiguous" under ''Chevron.'' The Supreme Court therefore upheld the Federal Communications Commission's determination that a cable Internet provider is an "information service", and not a "telecommunications service" and as such competing internet service provider == Background == In 1996, Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which regulated telecommunications services in light of the breakup of AT&T's monopoly. Providers of telecommunication services were require to sell access to their networks to the public.〔(Hansell, S. (June 28, 2005). Cable Wins Internet-Access Ruling. Retrieved May 29, 2008 )〕 Small Internet service providers, in the era of dial-up service, had equal access to home users because the first services were provided over plain old telephone services (POTS) which were regulated as common carriers. When Cable and Telephone operators wished to have themselves exempted from the competitive requirements of the Telecommunications Act, which broke up AT&T, they pressured the FCC to declare that Internet was not a telecommunications service. With this ruling, Telephone companies could give their own in-house operations pricing advantages over outside competitors, who frequently would be offered line access at double the rate for high speed internet services on the same line. Telephone companies such as AT&T also require that customers of third party ISPs purchase AT&T branded landline services in order to provide DSL. Cable companies, on the other hand, offered no access at all to their data lines. These policies would be illegal if Internet were ruled a Telecommunications Service, and telephone companies were forced to act as Common Carriers. Predatory pricing and unfair service conditions, such as the above mentioned bundling requirement, led Brand X and a number of other Internet Service to dispute the FCC ruling defining Internet not to be a Telecommunications Service. Small ISPs like Brand X hoped that common carrier treatment would open up Internet services to wider competition, benefiting the public with lower prices and better services. The FCC won in the three judge panel in the Ninth Circuit but then lost ''en banc'', which held that prior circuit precedent of the Ninth Circuit interpreting the sections in questions bound it. This case was important in the battle over network neutrality in the United States. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「National Cable & Telecommunications Ass'n v. Brand X Internet Services」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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