Is The Internet A Utility? ISP-Funded Lobbying Group Is Buying Anti-Net Neutrality Advertisements

As the debate over the Federal Communications Commission's proposal to change net neutrality rules heats up, internet service providers have taken to the fight by buying advertisements through advocacy group Broadband for America (BFA).

Gizmodo reported BFA is running advertisements on Google Ads so its website appears as a sponsored result when users search for topics involving net neutrality. The ad appears with the title, “Support Net Neutrality — Promote Broadband Innovation” and links to a page on BFA’s site dealing with net neutrality.

Read: FCC Net Neutrality News: A Bot Is Flooding Commission's Website With Anti-Net Neutrality Comments

The landing page of the advertisement contains a number of talking points that oppose net neutrality in its current form, which has classified the internet as a public utility under Title II of the Communications Act. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai introduced his plan to undo those protections, which has received the support of a number of major telecom companies.

“ ‘Title II’ is not net neutrality,” one bullet point on the site says before explaining that net neutrality is not controversial but that classifying internet service providers as common carriers under “1930s-era utility regulations” is. It also suggests the regulations “deter investment in networks and put internet jobs at risk.”

“If Silicon Valley used these rules, Apple would still be stuck in the garage and Google would just be the wrong way to spell a really big number,” the site argues.

What is not clear on the site is who is funding its message. BFA counts among its members AT&T, Charter, Comcast, the Telecommunications Industry Association and the Internet and Television Association (ITA) — formerly known as the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.

The trade organizations that back BFA are also composed of major wired and wireless internet providers and have dumped considerable resources into BFA. ITA gave more than $10 million to BFA between 2010 and 2014; a 2012 donation of $2 million accounted for more than half of BFA’s $3.5 million budget that year.

Read: Net Neutrality Rules: Title II To Be Reversed Under FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's Plan

In 2014, during the original debate over whether the FCC should reclassify the internet as a public utility, BFA was criticized by a number of small companies that it counted among its members for essentially tricking them into joining an anti-net neutrality organization. Other companies listed by BFA as members said they had never heard of the group.

The advertisements from BFA are the latest effort by organizations that support undoing current net neutrality protections to push their voice to the forefront of the debate.

Earlier this week, the FCC reported it was hit by a DDoS, or distributed denial-of-service, attack that took its commenting system offline. That flood of traffic came just after John Oliver encouraged viewers of his HBO show "Last Week Tonight" to leave comments on the FCC site encouraging the agency to keep current net neutrality protections.

Once the commenting system was once again online and accessible, it appeared an automated bot was leaving thousands of comments advocating for the reversal of Title II protections. The bot used names and addresses of people that appeared to be sourced from real estate websites.