Former commissioner: FCC should hit the brakes on Internet rules

A former member of the Federal Communications Commission is urging the agency to pump the breaks on its open Internet rules. 

Former Republican Commissioner Robert McDowell said the FCC should defer to Congress now that GOP members have released draft legislation to enforce net neutrality rules.

{mosads}”While Republicans and Democrats try to work out a deal, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler should hit the pause button on next month’s vote and let the elected representatives of the American people try to find common ground,” he said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Monday night. “At the end of this constitutional process, all sides may be able to claim victory.”

Republican leaders on the House and Senate Commerce committees released draft legislation last week and scheduled back-to-back hearings on the subject Wednesday. 

The proposal is meant to enforce many of the net neutrality rules that Democrats and other advocates have recommended, while also preventing the FCC from reclassifying broadband Internet as a public utility or using an alternate authority to enforce the rules. 

Democrats have balked at the legislation, saying it would “dramatically undermine” the agency’s authority. 

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has vowed to go ahead with a vote next month on proposed rules, which are expected to call for reclassifying broadband as a utility, under Title II of the Communications Act. 

McDowell, who is slated to testify at the Senate hearing, warned against the “power and breadth” of reclassification and described the Communications Act as a “Depression-era law designed to regulate phone monopolies.”

“It’s time to consider a different path — one that leads through Congress — to end the net-neutrality fiasco,” he wrote. “Although the legislative process can be perilous, Congress can provide all sides with a way out.”

If Wheeler goes ahead with new rules without giving Congress time to act, McDowell said, it would be a clear indication that the commissioner’s plan “all along” was expanding regulation over the Internet.

“The FCC stands at a fork in the road,” he wrote. “If the agency rushes down the Title II lane, it will own the consequences — decreased investment in the Internet, a hobbled tech sector and new taxes and fees on consumers.”