Two top Democratic legislators said Monday that they would begin a process to modernize telecommunications laws that were last overhauled in 1996 but barely mention the internet, The New York Times reports. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV [1] of West Virginia, chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, and Representative Henry A. Waxman [2] of California, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, said in a joint statement that they would hold meetings in June to examine how the Communications Act meets the current needs of consumers, the telecommunications industry and the Federal Communications Commission [3]. The issue came into focus in April when a federal appeals court ruled that the F.C.C. had overstepped its authority [4] in applying a portion of the Communications Act to an Internet service provider. In response, the F.C.C. announced a plan this month [5] to reclassify broadband Internet service, which is now lightly regulated as an information service. Under the change, it would be classified as a telecommunications service, similar to basic telephone service, and would therefore come under more scrutiny by the agency.