Regulator aims to kill net-neutrality rules

WASHINGTON — The nation’s top telecommunications regulator unveiled a plan Wednesday to dismantle the tough net-neutrality rules for online traffic that Democrats pushed through in 2015 over the objections of major internet-service providers.

Net-neutrality regulations are designed to ensure the unfettered flow of online content. They prohibit broadband providers from slowing internet speeds for some content such as video streams, selling faster lanes for delivering data or otherwise discriminating against any legal online material.

Ajit Pai, a Republican appointed by President

“Going forward, we cannot stick with regulations from the Great Depression meant to micromanage Ma Bell.”

—Ajit Pai, FCC Chairman

Donald Trump as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has been an outspoken opponent of the rules because they subject broadband providers to the same utility-like oversight as conventional phone companies.

Pai said Wednesday that he had sent a proposal to his fellow commissioners that would repeal that regulatory oversight and the agency’s vague general-conduct standard, which sought to protect internet users from future unreasonably discriminatory practices.

The Republicancontrolled agency is expected to vote next month to open a formal process to repeal the rules, seeking public comment on how to ensure net neutrality without what Pai called “the overhang of heavyhanded regulation.”

That move is likely to trigger a repeat of the outpouring of public comments and debate that engulfed the FCC in 2014 when the agency considered the netneutrality regulations.

“Going forward, we cannot stick with regulations from the Great Depression meant to micromanage Ma Bell,” Pai said in a speech sponsored by FreedomWorks, a libertarian advocacy group.

“Instead, we need rules that focus on growth and infrastructure investment, rules that expand high-speed internet access everywhere and give Americans more online choice, faster speeds and more innovation,” he said.

The regulations led the nation’s 12 largest internet-service providers to decrease their capital spending on broadband by $3.6 billion, or 5.6 percent, in 2016 compared with 2014, Pai said.

“It is the first time that such investment has declined outside of a recession in the internet era,” Pai said.

Supporters of net neutrality have disputed that the regulations led to a decline in investment.