Pressure Growing to Put Off Vote on Net Neutrality Rulemaking
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is likely to face growing pressure over the next few days to pull the net neutrality rulemaking from Thursday’s meeting agenda, said agency and industry officials. Commissioners and staff are busy working through a confusing array of issues on the incentive auction and spectrum aggregation rules (see related story below in this issue) also set for a vote. Two members of the commission, Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel and Republican Ajit Pai, last week asked for a delay (CD May 9 p1).
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
Friday, the FCC posted thousands of short comments from the public asking the agency to get tough on net neutrality, including reclassifying broadband as a Title II common-carrier service (http://bit.ly/1hCT3Ly).
Commissioners’ offices are talking to each other, but there hasn’t been a lot of progress, said a former FCC official who has been kept in the loop. It’s not clear whether the difference between the Democratic commissioners’ offices is a result of competing opinions on how best to proceed, or whether a personality clash is more to blame, he said. Personality differences are a common feature of the institutional dynamic, he said. “Every commission has this dynamic where the commissioners feel slighted and the chairman feels the commissioners are constantly making demands without understanding the difficulties and dynamics of his job."
The Democrats want to make changes to the rulemaking notice, said the former official, who does not represent clients active in the proceeding. A current agency official confirmed that there are ongoing discussions about the shape and content of the NPRM. Commissioners of both parties have pressed for a delay until staff can work through the auction item on the agenda. “The oxygen has been sucked out of the room by net neutrality,” the FCC official said.
"There is a lot of merit to what Commissioners Rosenworcel and Pai have suggested,” said an NAB spokesman Friday. “The open Internet proceeding has gone on in one form or another for many years; another four weeks seems reasonable. The current approach, to continue to allow lobbying only for open Internet but nothing else, doesn’t address the net neutrality issue and only harms incentive auction review. The commissioners do need ample time to get through the 400-plus pages of the incentive auction order, especially given that is incredibly technical and involves many moving pieces. We are optimistic that the chairman will agree to the commissioners’ requests, reverse course and postpone his paid priority proposal until June, at the very least."
A wireless industry lawyer and former FCC official questioned how commissioners will be able to work through all the remaining issues on net neutrality and the auction in just a few days. “It’s going to be really hard for them to home in on all of the complicated issues they have to address in the incentive auction order,” the lawyer said. While different advisers are working on the auction and net neutrality “the commissioners still have to engage on these issues -- these are big-ticket items,” the lawyer said.
"The commission has bitten off a tremendous amount of work to chew on for one open meeting,” said former Commissioner Robert McDowell. “That is an incredible amount of substance for commissioners’ offices to metabolize for one meeting. The prudent thing would be to break it up into pieces and address it over time."
But a broadcast industry lawyer said the commissioner offices seem on top of the key issues. The lawyer said many aspects of the auction rules will be pushed down the road for later decision by the commission or by staff acting on delegated authority, which should relieve some of the pressure to make the right policy calls at Thursday’s FCC meeting. ,