GOP regulators in the dark on Web rules

The head of the Federal Communications Commission has all but publicly confirmed that he will apply utility-styles rules to the Internet.

But inside the FCC, some of Chairman Tom Wheeler’s four other commissioners have largely been left in the dark.

{mosads}“I have been briefed, but I think the word there is brief. It was extremely brief,” Commissioner Michael O’Rielly, one of the FCC’s two Republicans, told reporters on Tuesday.

“I don’t have a lot of information,” he added. “The information I was given was a lot of this item is still to be determined.”

An aide for Commissioner Ajit Pai, the other Republican on the FCC, said that his office had not yet seen the order either. An aide for Democratic Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said that her office, too, had not yet seen the draft.

Wheeler isn’t scheduled to circulate his draft net neutrality rules to fellow FCC commissioners until Thursday, three weeks before the commission will vote whether or not to enact them. But leaks have already made their way to the press, and it might strike many as odd to learn that the debate is largely being crafted by one man alone.

Virtually every lobbyist and advocate focusing on the process expects the new rules to take the dramatic step of reclassifying broadband Internet service so that it can be treated like a utility, such as traditional phone lines.  

“That seems to be where the direction goes based on everything I’m reading, but I don’t know in what capacity” those rules will be applied, O’Rielly said. “I really don’t have a lot of information.”

O’Rielly has expressed concerns about that path, as have Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Before the issuance of those rules, GOP lawmakers have scrambled to write legislation that would prevent Internet service providers such as Comcast or Time Warner Cable from blocking or slowing people’s access to particular websites or from making deals to speed up some online traffic. Democrats have so far been skeptical of the rules, because they would also limit the FCC’s authority in some ways.

Republican lawmakers have also pushed for Wheeler to publicly release the full text of its rules before the Feb. 26 vote, which the FCC almost never does.

Wheeler has told lawmakers that he won’t do that, though O’Rielly has registered his objection. 

“I have supported that these rules should be made public when they’re circulated, presumably on Feb. 5,” he said on Thursday. 

This story was updated at 1:35 p.m.