Unlike three years ago, when Washington was all over the Federal Communications Commission cherishing net neutrality into hard-set rules, this time round its crickets. And that has net-neutrality advocates worried.
The FCC, led by Ajit Pai, whom President Donald Trump selected this year, has aimed to kill the net-neutrality rules the agency spent under the Obama administration in 2015. Those regulations prevented internet providers such as Verizon Communications Inc. and Comcast Corp. from promoting certain online content or charging firms like Netflix or Facebook Inc. to deliver their presents at faster speeds. The rules, shepherded through by then-Chairman Tom Wheeler, explained the internet more like a public utility required by everyone, like regular telephone service or power, which are controlled by the government.
When Wheeler, a Democrat whom President Barack Obama elected in 2013, proposed those rules, increasing consumer advocates were thrilled by the idea but internet providers were livid. Armies of attorneys and lobbyists representing AT&T Inc., Verizon, Comcast and others splashed into FCC’s headquarters, about a half mile from the iconic Washington Monument. They arrived armed with binders, briefs and PowerPoint presentations to defy and cajole FCC commissioners and staff.
In all, FCC administrators and staff held 79 meetings between the release of Wheeler’s nomination in May 2014 and the judgment deadline in September 2014, more than a conference every two days, according to an analysis of FCC documents by the Center for Public Integrity. Nearly 63 percent of those get-togethers were with jobs or their trade groups. In the end, the Democratic-majority delegation voted 3-2 along party lines to reclassify internet providers as a utility-like “regular carrier,” much like telephone service.
Now, three years later, current FCC Chairman Pai, a free-market Republican and a staunch critic of state regulations, has suggested reversing Wheeler’s rules, aggressively forcing a return to classifying internet providers as an “information service,” a name with far fewer regulations.
The change, which the FCC is likely to decide on later this year, would both News commission’s ability to rein in providers and open the opportunity, again, of creating slow and fast lanes for internet traffic prepared in part by who is willing to pay.
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