The Federal Communications Commission will vote on its hugely controversial on network neutrality in February, The Washington Post reports. In its original conception, the FCC’s plan would have allowed for the creation of Internet “fast lanes” in which ISPs could charge content providers more money to ensure that their content gets delivered more quickly than other websites’. This would be a big difference from standard practices in which packets are delivered on a nondiscriminatory basis.
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According to the Post, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler has said he plans to start circulating a new proposal within the commission next month with the goal of voting on it weeks later. The Post doesn’t exactly say what Wheeler’s new proposal will consist of, although the publication does note that “momentum has been building recently for far more aggressive regulations than Wheeler had initially proposed.”
The FCC first announced its plans to delay its vote on net neutrality last November, as the commission seemed caught off guard by the backlash its original proposal created. The FCC is trying to craft a new net neutrality policy after a lawsuit from Verizon successfully overturned the commission’s previous net neutrality regulations. Verizon’s lawsuit now looks like it could backfire, however, because it looks like the commission may be pushed to enact even stricter rules on carriers going forward.
