Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Tom Wheeler hit back at questioning of the US regulator’s authority to enact the Open Internet rules.

A clutch of leading US trade groups are pressing for what is called an en banc review of a June decision by a US appeals court that the FCC has authority to impose utility-style regulation on broadband providers to ensure an open internet.

The petitions by the CTIA, the American Cable Association, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association and USTelecom request a hearing in front of the full DC Circuit Court of Appeals, an en banc hearing, rather than the three-judge panel that ruled against them in June.

“It comes as no surprise that the big dogs have challenged the three-judge panel’s decision,” said Wheeler.

“We are confident that the full court will agree with the panel’s affirmation of the FCC’s clear authority to enact its strong Open Internet rules, the reasoned decision-making upon which they are based, and the adequacy of the record from which they were developed.”

Expert opinion would appear to be against the trade groups, and in favour of the FCC’s position.

For instance, Andrew Schwartzman, Benton senior counselor at the Public Interest Communications Law Project at Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Public Representation, wrote in a recent article, quoted by Motherboard: “The likelihood that the full DC Circuit would agree to rehear the case, much less reverse the panel’s decision, is extremely remote.”

“The DC Circuit typically agrees to rehear a case only a few times each year, at most, usually where there is a sharp split on an important issue on which other circuits have taken a different stance. This case doesn’t meet those criteria and thus starts out as a particularly poor candidate for rehearing,” he added.