President Obama is facing pressure from House Minority Leader John Boehner and Minority Whip Eric Cantor over FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's plan to prevent telecommunications and cable broadband providers from blocking or degrading competing content and services on the Internet. In a Friday letter, the pair wrote that the Commission should direct its energy on developing the national broadband plan, which is due to Congress in February.
"We believe that network neutrality regulations would actually thwart further broadband investment and availability, and that a well-reasoned broadband plan would confirm our view," Boehner and Cantor wrote. "To hastily begin the process of adopting network neutrality rules months before issuing such a plan implies that politics are driving the FCC's decision-making process." The FCC is slated to vote on the proposed net neutrality rules at its Oct. 22 meeting.
Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge and a proponent of Genachowski's effort, called it "truly unfortunate" that the House Republican leadership has tried to slow what she called "the greatest economic engine for job creativity and innovation ever created." The FCC's aim is to establish a set of principles to preserve an open Internet for all Americans, she said. "Net neutrality is simply a guarantee of fairness, a prohibition on discrimination," Sohn added.
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