Net Neutrality News

Broadband Internet service is now classified as an “information” service under the FCC’s rules, which allows it to escape some types of regulation that are applied to “telecommunications” services such as wired phone lines. But Web activists have for years questioned that categorization, and said that people’s increasing dependence on an open and free Internet should prompt the FCC to change course.

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Federal regulators will follow President Obama’s call and reclassify Internet service so that it can be regulated like a utility, the head of the Federal Communications Commission said on Wednesday.

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The “enforceable, bright-line rules” will ban Internet service providers such as Comcast or Verizon from blocking or slowing people’s access to content online. They will also ban “fast lane” deals that the companies could make with websites to speed up particular services, and extend the rules to Internet accessed through people’s cellphones and tablets for the first time.

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In Congress, Republicans have raced to write new legislation that would enshrine in law some net neutrality protections — such as a ban on blocking, slowing or speeding up people’s access to particular websites – but would ban the FCC from treating the Web like a utility, among other new restrictions. Democrats have so far balked at the measure, and a deal seems unlikely until at least until after the FCC votes on the rules on Feb. 26.

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[T]he new rules will decline to regulate rates, impose tariffs or take some other aggressive regulatory steps that critics have worried about.

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Wheeler promised that his new draft rules — the text of which will likely not become public for another three weeks — “will be strong enough and flexible enough not only to deal with the realities of today, but also to establish ground rules for the as yet unimagined.”

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Major Internet service providers have pledged a lawsuit over the looming rules, setting up a court battle that could last for years. Wheeler has acknowledged those anticipated lawsuits in recent weeks, and has said that his new rules are designed to withstand them.

  The Hill

We’ll see.