The proposal to do away with net neutrality is worse than you think

[Commentary] In doing away with the 2015 rules that prohibit broadband providers from discriminating against or favoring certain content, applications and services (that is, no blocking, no throttling, no fast lanes and a general rule against discrimination), Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has radically departed from bipartisan FCC precedent. This opens the door for companies like Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and Charter to pick winners and losers on the Internet by controlling which online companies get faster and better quality of service and at what price.  Sounds bad, right? Believe it or not, the proposed order is worse than that.

• The proposed order would leave broadband providers largely if not completely free of oversight
• The proposed order would prohibit states and localities from protecting their citizens

What’s next? Pai’s proposed order is now “circulating” among the other four Commissioners, some of whom may offer edits to the document. For the next two weeks, the FCC will take public comment on the proposal and then one week before the FCC’s December 14 meeting, it will go into its “Sunshine” period, in which comment from the public is prohibited. Pai made clear that he doesn’t value public comments, so the best thing for you to do is to contact your representatives in Congress. Now. Just yesterday, some 175,000 calls opposing the proposal went to members of Congress. The goal is to get Republicans to urge Pai not to proceed once they recognize that repeal of the net neutrality rules, like repeal of the broadband privacy rules before it, is extremely unpopular and will hurt them at the ballot box in 2018.  If that doesn’t happen, the FCC will vote on Pai’s proposed order on December 14, where it is expected to pass. After that, get ready for a bunch of lawsuits and at least an 18-month to two-year wait for a court to decide the fate of the rules and the FCC’s ability to protect consumers and competition.

[Gigi B. Sohn is an Open Society Foundations Leadership in Government Fellow. From November 2013 through December 2016, Gigi served as Counselor to the Chairman in the Office of FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. In the coming months, Sohn will be writing articles for the Benton Foundation's Digital Beat, examining the importance of open, democratic, accessible, and affordable communications networks.