Verizon and AT&T slam FCC net neutrality ruling

Immediately after the Federal Communications Commission approved a proposal in favor of net neutrality, Verizon has issued a response.

In a letter, the company wrote:

The FCC’s move is especially regrettable because it is wholly unnecessary. The FCC had targeted tools available to preserve an open Internet, but instead chose to use this order as an excuse to adopt 300- plus pages of broad and open- ended regulatory arcana that will have unintended negative consequences for consumers and various parts of the Internet ecosystem for years to come.

But Verizon’s retort is not without humor. The company first issued the note in Morse code with a note offering a translation to readers in the 21st century.

As expected, AT&T has also come out against the ruling. In a blog post, Jim Cicconi, AT&T’s senior executive vice president of external and legislative affairs, wrote that the decision is more or less nonsense:

What doesn’t make sense, and has never made sense, is to take a regulatory framework developed for Ma Bell in the 1930s and make her great grandchildren, with technologies and options undreamed of eighty years ago, live under it.

Cicconi went on to say that the partisan nature of this vote, clearly divided along party lines, means that this debate isn’t yet over. “A 3-2 decision, particularly on issues of such broad scope, is an invitation to revisiting the decision, over and over and over,” he said.

So far neither company seems to have asked the courts to suspend the ruling pending a potential lawsuit, though that may happen in the next few days.

To see Verizon’s letter, see below: