The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has unveiled plans to repeal a landmark 2015 order that barred internet service providers from blocking or slowing down consumer access to web content.
On Tuesday FCC chief Ajit Pai, a Republican appointed by President Donald Trump in January, said the commission will vote at a December 14 meeting on rescinding the so-called net neutrality rules championed by Democratic former President Barack Obama that treated internet service providers like public utilities.
With three Republican and two Democratic commissioners, the move is all but certain to be approved. Trump, a Republican, expressed his opposition to net neutrality in 2014 before the regulations were even implemented, calling it a "power grab" by Obama.
"The FCC will no longer be in the business of micromanaging business models and pre-emptively prohibiting services and applications and products that could be pro-competitive," Pai said in an interview, adding that the Obama administration had sought to pick winners and losers and exercised "heavy-handed" regulation of the internet.
The net neutrality rules, aimed at giving consumers equal access to web content, also forbade broadband providers from charging consumers more for certain content, a practice called "paid prioritisation".
Pai said state and local governments "need to be preempted" from imposing their own net neutrality rules because broadband internet service is "inherently an interstate service".
The FCC's planned action represents a victory for internet service providers including AT&T Inc, Comcast Corp and Verizon Communications Inc, which had urged the FCC to revoke the rules. The companies have said that repealing the could lead to billions of dollars in additional broadband investment and eliminate the possibility that a future presidential administration could regulate internet pricing.
