The FCC’s Ajit Pai to Make His Move on Net Neutrality

November 21st, 2017 by · 18 Comments

The days before Thanksgiving are apparently ripe for regulatory moves this year. While the DOJ prepares for court in its opposition to AT&T/Time Warner, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is about to unveil plans to overhaul net neutrality.

And by overhaul, he means scrap. Pai will supposedly propose to revoke the Title II status implemented by the previous chairman to give net neutrality rules a firm legal foundation.

The chairman’s opposition to the current regime isn’t exactly a secret. In April he said “The truth of the matter is that we decided to abandon successful policies solely because of hypothetical harms and hysterical prophecies of doom.”

Prophecies of doom also feature highly from the other side, which sees lack of the same policies leading to a stifling of innovation where network operators can charge tolls at the last mile bottleneck between content and consumer. Big content may be able to pay the tolls where startups aren’t likely to.

But we have yet to see the actual overhaul plan, so it’s premature to pass judgment. But advocacy groups have been expecting this, and are surely ready to fight.  It’s going to be an interesting winter on the regulatory front.

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Categories: Government Regulations · Internet Traffic

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18 Comments So Far


  • jc says:

    What he also said is shifting the enforcement burden of ant-competitive behavior over to the FTC, where it more appropriately belongs.

  • bebbers says:

    Thank you President Trump! I love winning again, please keep taking out that last morons EOs.

  • Dennis says:

    How anyone can spin this and suggest we will have more innovation without net neutrality is beyond me. If this goes through I predict it will be the revenge of the Baby Bells. If you are a small Telco/CableCo your days will be numbered. The greed-on-steroids Wall Street driven giants will own the consumer again just like the good old days (“Make America Great Again”) of metered services. As if internet/broadband services are “cheap” as they are today. Unbelievable greed.

    • mhammett says:

      This will more freely enable innovation and deployment by independent ISPs.

      I don’t know why you’d think small ISPs’ days are numbered. The sun is about to shine.

      • Peter Radizeski says:

        Inter-connection will go up. You, Mike (the small indie ISP) buy your bandwidth from a bigger ISP, who is in a revenue death spiral. So they will be happy to increase rates. Especially now that there are even less backbone providers.

    • Anonymous says:

      Okay, comrade.

      Networks who have spent billions to create a network have a right to charge for it and use it for what they want. And you have a right to use another service. Like, say, a “smaller” ISP. There is great irony in not trusting your mega ISP to get you unfiltered data that you want to get from Google, instead.

      You understand that the internet is not a magical thing that sprang up from nothingness to serve you porn and Russian propaganda, right? its actually just a collection of other people’s wires, routers, and computers. I don’t see anyone signing up for laws that give us access to your home router, wifi, and PCs – though it would be “my right” to have access to information and you can’t tell me what I can and can’t see, pal.

    • bebbers says:

      Easy snowflake, I want prices to go up, this gives me a raise that I have needed for years. MAGA!

    • bebbers says:

      Did you vote Clinton or Sanders? Has to be one or another. MAGA!

  • Doug Jones says:

    Hey @bebbers how does that winning feel this morning? Go back to reading Infowars and sitting in your basement.

  • bebbers says:

    Look jackass I live in my house in Fla, anytime you feel the need to talk about winning please stop by!

  • Doug Jones says:

    @bebbers I should have guessed FL. Which one of these FL Man articles are about you?

    https://www.reddit.com/r/FloridaMan/

    Pro tip – in the future don’t tell people you are from FL. It does not help your argument.

  • Doug Jones says:

    @bebbers We all compensate for our shortcomings in our own way! Thanks for playing.

  • bebbers says:

    Doug: Is your Internet still on? MAGA

  • bebbers says:

    As a sales person I want prices to rise, not sure why you do not understand that? Must be a Bernie fan.

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