Senate Dems protest FCC plan for Internet ‘fast lanes’

A group of 10 senators are asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to abandon a proposal that would allow Internet providers to create online “fast lanes.”

The proposal from FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler would “irrevocably change the Internet as we know it,” the senators wrote in a letter to Chairman Wheeler.

“Small businesses, content creators and Internet users must not be held hostage by an increasingly consolidated broadband industry.” The letter comes days before the FCC’s scheduled May 15 vote on Chairman Wheeler’s attempts to rewrite his agency’s network neutrality rules.

In their letter, the senators said Chairman Wheeler’s proposal “would eradicate net neutrality, not preserve it.” They told the FCC chairman that his plan goes against the agency’s commitment to an open Internet.

“The genius of the Internet is that it allows innovation without permission, not innovation only after cutting a deal with the [Internet provider] and receiving the FCC’s blessing for it,” the letter said. Instead of Chairman Wheeler’s current plans, the agency should consider reclassifying Internet providers to make them more like traditional phone companies, over which the agency has clear authority to regulate more broadly.