The U.S. Federal Communications Commission plans to vote on new net neutrality rules during its February meeting. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler will bring a proposal to a vote during the commission’s Feb. 26 meeting, FCC spokeswoman Kim Hart said Friday, following a report in the Washington Post.
On Wednesday the Democrats introduced a bill in both the House of Representatives and the Senate that would require the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to ban paid prioritization agreements. The FCC is preparing to vote on new net neutrality rules in late February, after an appeals court threw out a large portion of the agency’s old rules a year ago.
The reintroduced Online Competition and Consumer Choice Act, which failed to pass after Democrats introduced it last year, is designed to prevent broadband providers from creating Internet fast lanes and slow lanes, based on the ability of Web content providers and services to pay for faster speeds, sponsors said.
On February 11th, the European Parliament has adopted a resolution in which it commits to work toward finalising, by the end of 2015, a directive on EU Passenger Name Records (PNR). This proposal aims at the systematic data collection, retention and analysis by national authorities of passengers taking flights entering or leaving the EU. This data, originally collected by airline companies, contains plethora of personal data, from passengers’ personal and contact details, itinerary, payment methods, to sometimes even food preferences.
Police are a step closer to gaining broad access to the personal details of anyone flying in or out of Europe after EU lawmakers on Wednesday (11 February) agreed to break a deadlock on a stalled EU bill.
Euro-deputies in Strasbourg voted on a resolution with an amendment to reach an agreement on the EU’s passenger name (EU PNR) record bill by the end of the year.
Advocates of strong net neutrality rules have generated more than 1 million messages to the FCC or Congress since the beginning of 2015 via the Battleforthenet.com website. “You can’t buy public opinion,” Evan Greer, campaign director of digital rights group Fight for the Future, said during a press briefing Wednesday. “We very clearly have won in the sphere of public opinion.”
The FCC is scheduled to vote on new rules that would reclassify broadband as a regulated utility on Feb. 26, and with agency rules mandating a week-long quiet period on lobbying before then, groups on both sides of the long-running debate were making last-minute pitches.
It didn’t take long for congressional Republicans to attack the Federal Communications Commission’s vote to strike down two state laws that prevent municipal broadband networks from expanding.
Seven Republican lawmakers introduced a bill on Thursday, just hours after the FCC vote, that would prohibit the agency from preempting state laws that limit municipal broadband networks. The main sponsors of the bill are Representative Marsha Blackburn, of Tennessee, and Senator Thom Tillis, of North Carolina.
Policy Observatory