"This is the key distinction and change: broadband providers are providing two different things that can be viewed and legislated for separately. From this, all else flows. That may seem obvious to people, but legally it wasn't the way of things until now."
Finally.
This particular point and, specifically, the definition of the word 'offering' - in the context of 'Telecommunications Providers' being those 'offering telecommunications services' - has been at the crux of the argument.
When it comes down to it, the Supreme Court's (split) decision to allow the previous FCC interpretation, that ISPs are not 'Telecommunications providers', comes down almost entirely to them arguing that the word 'offer' can be construed to have "alternative dictionary definitions" that result in the judgement that a broadband provider who offers Internet connectivity bundled with other services doesn't not actually 'offer' Internet connectivity, because it is not 'offered' as a "standalone service".
Yes, really.
The ridiculousness of this assertion was well highlighted by Scalia in his dissent. Much was made of his amusing comaprison with home-delivery pizza but I think the pet-store analogy was more concise.
His point was that the precise definition of 'offer[ing]' matters less than the nature of the object(s) being offered. Thus, a pet store selling dogs does not 'offer' water, even though, as Scalia noted, "dogs and cats are largely water at the molecular level". Quite so. "But", he goes on to say, "what is sometimes true is not, as the Court seems to assume, always true."
To highlight this, he gives the example of a pet store with "a policy of selling puppies only with leashes". As he rightly points out, any sane person would indeed conclude that the store "does offer puppies because a leashed puppy is still a puppy, even though it is not offered on a 'stand-alone' basis."
This, seriously, is what is at the heart of the argument - if a broadband provider sells high-speed Internet access bundled with 'other' services, are they actually "offering" high-speed Internet access?
There was no question that the offering of high-speed Internet access classifies one as a 'Telecommunications provider' so the interpretation had to rely on twisting the language and possible meanings such that ISPs could be deemed not to 'offer' Internet access. No matter that this access is the key part of their 'offering' and that the providers specifically advertise the speed of access as a selling point.
As Scalia noted, this is clearly crazy and utterly at odds with what any normal person would understand. If you asked anyone if their ISP "offers" Internet access (and filtered out the smart-alec remarks) you can be pretty sure that everyone would say "yes".