The chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has proposed net neutrality rules based on reclassifying broadband as a regulated public utility and will ask fellow commissioners to approve that approach later this month.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, as expected, will offer net neutrality rules that reverse a long-standing agency practice of treating broadband as a lightly regulated information service, instead reclassifying it as a regulated common carrier under Title II of the Telecommunications Act.
“I am submitting to my colleagues the strongest open Internet protections ever proposed by the FCC,” Wheeler wrote in a Wired.com opinion piece published Wednesday. “These enforceable, bright-line rules will ban paid prioritization, and the blocking and throttling of lawful content and services.”