Interesting. I told my (engineering) students to avoid the term IAP because of obsolescence. I tell them that a cable service must be evaluated according to the technological specification of the service to determine whether the service is a service of common carriage.

A state may make try to create its own separate definition of cable service. A cable service could then be regulated separately from other communications common carriage services if the cable service is a communications common carriage service.

A Massachusetts Court, for example, would look at each cable service individually and decide as a matter of law whether Massachusetts common carriage law applied to an specific type of cable service.

The FCC does not define a service to be a common carriage service. The common law definition of common carriage determines whether a service is common carriage. The FCC decides whether a communications-related common carriage service is a telecommunications service that the FCC should regulate.

FedEx is not responsible if a customer pays FedEx to carry a bootleg copyright-infringing copy of a book to a destination address.

Cox seems to be a victim of a lawyer that understood neither Title 47 nor the law of common carriage.

I ban my students from using the term “ISP” because of its semantic ambiguity

An Internet Access Provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. IAPs generally provide dial-up access through a modem and PPP connection, though companies that offer Internet access with other devices, such as cable modems or wireless connections, could also be considered IAPs.

The terms IAPs and ISP (Internet Service Providers) are often used interchangeably, though some people consider IAPs to be a subset of ISPs. Whereas IAPs offer only Internet access, ISPs may provide additional services, such as leased lines (T-1 or T-3) and Web development. In contrast to both IAPs and ISPs, online services provide their own proprietary content in addition to Internet access.