Broadband Internet access service providers would face a new, top-to-bottom consumer privacy regime.

Twelve months after the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) imposed common-carrier telecommunications rules on broadband providers in the agency’s landmark Open Internet proceeding, the FCC has now proposed customer privacy and data breach rules for broadband. The new comprehensive privacy regime the FCC has proposed (which will be finalized after the FCC receives public comment) is intended to implement the core privacy principles of transparency, choice and security. The regime would impose, for the first time, broadband-specific privacy requirements pursuant to Section 222 of the Communications Act (the Act) on all broadband Internet access service providers (broadband providers), which the FCC calls “the most important and extensive conduits of consumer information.”