Has Sen. John Kerry flip-flopped on regulating broadband?

A senior Democratic policy advisor in Kerry’s office denied that the senator had changed his position on the FCC’s role in regulating the Internet. “This letter was written to protect small voice over Internet protocol [VOIP] providers from being charged for payment into the universal service fund,” the advisor wrote. “At the time the companies now arguing against reclassification wanted to keep Vonage, Skype and others from providing phone service and were trying to do it by imposing new costs on them. We were trying to incent new competition and allow a nascent service and industry to grow.”

Likewise, Kerry spokesperson, Jodi Seth, told The Daily Caller that “Sen. Kerry’s position remains the same” as in 1998: “Neither the government nor concentrated market gatekeepers should hinder innovation at the edge of the network or create new barriers to entry for startup services.”

While VOIP was indeed a hot topic in the late 90s, the “emerging service” the FCC was the most concerned with at the time was broadband, as evidenced by FCC working papers published at the end of the last decade.