Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned that Democrats in Congress will fight “tooth and nail” against the Trump administration plan to roll back “net neutrality” regulations.
Ajit Pai, the Republican chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, announced during a speech Wednesday his intention to offer a proposed rulemaking in May to dismantle the Obama-era FCC ruling in 2015 that classified Internet service providers like AT&T and Comcast as Title II public utilities, subject to FCC control, which allowed more stringent oversight over companies that might block or inhibit access to certain types of web services by creating pay-to-play fast lanes for certain content.
Speaking to at a Washington, D.C., event held by the conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks, Pai pledged “we are going to deliver” on undoing the “heavy-handed” rule in favor of “light touch” regulation.
Schumer said in a statement that this “dramatic step in the wrong direction,” would “do nothing to invigorate our economy or spark innovation” and create an “aggravating experience for consumers and potentially bank-breaking consequences for American start-ups.”
“While big cable may be cheering the FCC on, I am confident that the millions of Americans who weighed in with the FCC in support of the Open Internet order will once again make their voices heard to demonstrate how wrongheaded this approach is,” he added.
Schumer echoed fellow Democrats, including Sen. Ed Markey who promised a “tsunami of resistance” from grassroots supporters of net neutrality, saying his fellow Democrats will not “tolerate the FCC conspiring with industry insiders to roll back critical consumer protections for an open Internet.”
“We will fight it tooth and nail,” he warned.
Pai’s notice of proposed rulemaking will be voted on at the FCC’s public meeting on May 18, and if passed, which is expected as Republicans outnumber Democrats two-to-one, a public comment period will follow. The rule would return the classification of broadband service to a Title I information service.
