FCC extends deadline for net neutrality comments

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Friday agreed to extend a deadline for submitting comments on its proposal to repeal Obama-era net neutrality rules.

The deadline for responding to the first round of public comments, which closed last month, has been extended from Aug. 16 to Aug. 30.

Groups supporting net neutrality filed a motion for an eight-week extension to respond to comments in favor of the repeal effort, submitted largely by the cable and telecom industries.

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Those industry groups opposed the extension arguing that both sides of this long-running debate have had “multiple opportunities to weigh in on the core issues in play here for over fifteen years across a range of public dockets.” 

“While it is the policy of the Commission that ‘extensions shall not be routinely granted,’ we find that an extension of the reply comment deadline is appropriate in this case in order to allow interested parties to respond to the record in this proceeding,” Daniel Kahn, the FCC’s chief of the competition policy division, wrote in Friday’s order.

“We find that permitting interested parties an additional two weeks in which to file their reply comments will allow parties to provide the Commission with more thorough comments, ensuring that the Commission has a complete record on which to develop its decisions,” Kahn wrote.