FCC Commissioner Urges People To Oppose Net Neutrality Repeal

President Trump’s new Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has now announced plans to overturn the 2015 FCC order to dump net neutrality. A vote on the proposal is to be held on May 18, and the telecom world is eagerly waiting for the same. Meanwhile, FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn called upon the consumers to voice their support for the net neutrality rules.

“In just a matter of days, the FCC’s majority will tee up an item aimed at dismantling the open Internet protections that so many Americans fought for and won back in 2015,” Clyburn said speaking in a broadband forum in Los Angeles. “So we cannot afford to remain silent.”

The remarks of Clyburn on net neutrality just a week before the scheduled vote to decide whether to move on with the plan of the new chairman to gut the net neutrality rules will have a significant effect. The net neutrality rules reclassified various internet providers as utility companies and imposed a set of common carrier rules and regulations on them. These regulations include a ban on throttling and blocking the internet traffic, and offering paid fast lanes.

The plans of Pai focus on reversing the decision of FCC to classify the various broadband internet providers as utility companies that are regulated under the “Title II” of the Federal Communications Act. The FCC took this step after a Federal Appeals Court invalidated the earlier regulations in place, which prevented the internet service providers from throttling or blocking the data traffic.

Clyburn warned users that eliminating the regulations might affect the ability of users to access the World Wide Web. “In a world without net neutrality, your internet service provider could charge you even more to access your preferred websites, or worse, block those sites altogether,” she said. “Or imagine if your broadband provider, who also happens to own a major Spanish language broadcaster, gives priority access to their website, but slows down the speeds of your favorite but competing website. These are the very real scenarios that could happen, if the FCC’s majority and the big broadband providers get their way.”