Pai, O'Rielly to FCC: Delay Title II Vote

By John Eggerton
( Broadcasting & Cable )
published

With the last ditch in sight before the Feb. 26 vote on reclassifying Internet service providers as telecoms under Title II, minority FCC commissioners Ajit Pai and Michael O'Rielly have asked agency chairman Tom Wheeler to delay the vote.

They want the chairman to release the 332-page draft order – a request Pai has made before – and give "the American people" at least 30 days to study it.

Pai and O'Rielly said if the FCC does that, then takes more time to vet those new comments, it could proceed to a final vote. They say new comments are needed given that the proposal is "dramatically different" from the chairman's May 2014 proposal, which did not rely on Title II but instead on a commercially reasonable standard under Sec. 706 authority.

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John Eggerton
John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.