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Shutterstock.com[/caption] On Monday, net neutrality as federal law officially ended. Supporters of net neutrality are continuing the fight in the courts and state legislatures, but the Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of the 2015 Obama-era policy took effect June 11, as scheduled. The revocation of net neutrality, which was meant to guarantee that all content and applications are treated equally on the internet, has divided corporate America. Internet service providers hailed the repeal, but many companies that depend upon the web such as Alphabet Inc., parent company of Google, and Facebook Inc., opposed it. The FCC voted 3-2 in December to undo the protections, of course, in the Restoring Internet Freedom Order. The FCC vote came after a public comment period in which the commission received 21.7 million comments, but at least 7.5 million were later revealed to be duplicates or false, according to the Pew Research Center. The Government Accountability Office said in January that it would investigate the matter, which may play into the pending lawsuits over the FCC repeal. Polling indicated more than three-quarters of Americans opposed repealing net neutrality.Democratic legislators have sponsored a Congressional Review Act resolution meant to nullify the FCC’s decision. The resolution prevailed in a floor vote in the U.S. Senate on May 16, when members voted 52-47 to reinstate net neutrality in Senate Joint Resolution 52. A similar bill, House Joint Resolution 129, has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. But the Republican-majority House—where Speaker Paul Ryan endorsed the FCC repeal—has yet to bring it to a vote and leadership has indicated it won’t. A discharge petition needs 48 additional signatures by the end of the year to force a vote, for a total of 218 signatures.Meanwhile, at least 29 states including New York and California have introduced legislation that would require net neutrality, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. States also are suing the FCC in federal court to overturn the order. Attorneys general from 23 states filed a petition for review against the FCC in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.Last year, as the FCC considered repealing net neutrality under its new chairman Ajit Pai, telecom and tech companies, internet service providers and consumer and open-internet advocacy groups poured millions of dollars into lobbying the commission and members of Congress, spending that has continued into 2018. Here are some of the clients—including major corporations—that lobbied for and against net neutrality last year and in the first quarter of this year.

Big Spenders

Some 249 clients lobbied the FCC in 2017, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group in Washington, D.C., filing 253 reports listing the agency. Comcast, NCTA and SoftBank Corp.’s Sprint Communications were the top three, filing 13 disclosures each. About 18 telecommunications companies, trade and conservative advocacy groups spent at least $110 million in 2017 in lobbying aimed at overturning net neutrality, according to a review of federal lobbying records from the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, compiled and analyzed by the center at Open Secrets.org. The figures aren’t exact, because lobbying forms often named net neutrality among several telecom issues or bills on which companies or organizations lobbied. Meanwhile, about 24 groups, including internet-dependent companies, spent $39 million last year trying to keep net neutrality. Net neutrality supporters included Amazon.com Inc., which spent at least $13 million; Facebook Inc., which spent spent $11.5 million; and Twitter, which spent $550,000. In 1990, the entire telecom and equipment industry as a whole spent less than $1.3 million lobbying, according to the center’s records at OpenSecrets.org. The industry now consistently ranks among the top 20 in lobbying expenditures. Of 248 clients whose lobbying forms that mentioned the term “net neutrality” since 2006, the top five were Comcast, Verizon, AT&T Inc., AOL LLC, and NCTA. The primary telecom trade group, the Internet and Television Association (NCTA), spent $4.3 million in the final quarter of last year lobbying, including on the FCC proposal, a 71 percent increase from the previous quarter, according to the center. It said $1.2 million of that was outsourced to other lobbyists, including both strategic communication/lobbying firms and law firms. Overall NCTA spent $12.8 million lobbying last year. Among the law firms and lobbying firms that received the most funds from the NCTA in 2017 were Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo ($510,000); Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck ($480,000); Williams & Jensen ($280,000); and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld ($200,000). Strong spending by NCTA continues this year, with Mintz Levin having already received $330,000 and Brownstein Hyatt $120,000 in the first quarter of 2018, according to records. On Senate Joint Resolution 52 specifically, the bill sponsored by Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey that would overturn the FCC’s rule ending net neutrality, 15 organizations lobbied including the NCTA, CTIA, Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile), Dropbox Inc., the National Taxpayers Union, Comcast Corp., Cox Enterprises, Oracle Corp., the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Verizon Communications Inc., AT&T and the American Conservative Union in the first quarter of 2018. NCTA, which opposed the resolution, has filed the most disclosure reports on the bill. Akin Gump received $50,000 from NCTA to lobby on the S.J. Res 52 as well as House Joint Resolutions 131 and 129, which also relate to net neutrality and would overturn the FCC’s order. Williams & Jensen received $70,000 in the first quarter of 2018 from NCTA, according to their lobbying disclosure forms, including those dealing with the Senate and House net neutrality bills. A disclosure form indicated Oracle spent $1.23 million in the first quarter of 2018 lobbying on various telecom issues including Senate Joint Resolution 52 and House Joint Resolution 129, which would restore net neutrality. Oracle senior vice president Kenneth Glueck signed the tech company's forms. Cox Enterprises also spent $1.36 million lobbying on the Senate Joint Resolution 52 in the first quarter of 2018, among numerous other telecom-related issues, according to a lobbying form. Cox supported overturning the 2015 FCC order while saying it is committed to not throttling or slowing down service for consumers. Many of the 12 organizations registered to lobby on H.J. Res. 129 were the same as those lobbying on the Senate bill. The Free Press Action Fund, a nonprofit organization supporting open internet that is lobbying for restoration of net neutrality, contributed $40,000 for lobbying to enact HR 129, according to lobbying disclosure forms, among other telecom-related matters. Lobbying on net neutrality-related bills in Congress is likely to continue through the end of the year, or at least until the end of the session in August, because of the discharge petition.