The Federal Communications Commission will meet on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, and is expected to announce how it intends to gut net neutrality.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai "will try to shrink the footprint of the rules," said Daniel Berninger, a telecom engineer who has opposed the regulations. The FCC declined to comment. […]
Many of the specifics of Pai's plan remain unclear, but a central part of the effort will involve undoing the FCC's decision to declare Internet providers as telecommunications service providers. The legal designation allowed the FCC to more strictly regulate broadband firms than when the companies were known merely as providers of an "information service."
Pai's deregulatory proposal will probably reverse this decision, according to analysts, setting off a chain of consequences for the industry and how it is regulated. If the move is approved — and it probably will be, given that Pai and the Republican Party control three of the FCC's five seats — responsibility for regulating Internet providers could flow away from the FCC and toward the Federal Trade Commission, which is charged with protecting consumers from unfair and deceptive business practices.
The FTC doesn't have the regulatory teeth to prevent big telecom from screwing its customers and from turning the whole internet into a pay to play system. What the FTC does is levy fines to companies for false advertising. They can't do anything to make Comcast, or any other provider, deliver on its promises.
Congressional Republicans have been working on net neutrality legislation, and apparently Pai is trying to exert pressure on Democrats to negotiate. They want the FCC to destroy net neutrality in order to force Democrats to be the responsible governing party and help the save themselves. You know: the usual bullshit.
Time is running out before Trump’s FCC and Big Cable destroy net neutrality—but we can still stop them. Tell congress to oppose Trump FCC's plan to destroy net neutrality and the open internet