The Federal Communications Commission will vote next month to start the process of reversing the commission's 2015 net neutrality order, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced in a speech today.

Earlier today, Pai shared with his fellow commissioners a plan to "reverse the mistake of Title II and return to the light-touch regulatory framework that served our nation so well during the Clinton administration, Bush administration, and the first six years of the Obama administration," he said.

Pai's net neutrality rollback targets the FCC's February 2015 reclassification of fixed and mobile Internet providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. Title II provides the regulatory authority the FCC used to prohibit ISPs from blocking or throttling traffic and from giving priority to Web services in exchange for payment. The FCC used Title II to impose the net neutrality rules after a previous court decision struck down rules issued without the step of reclassifying ISPs as common carriers.

Pai said he will seek public comment about the blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization rules, but the act of eliminating the Title II classification of ISPs would also eliminate those rules. Going forward, he said, he wants broadband to be classified as a lightly regulated "Title I information service."

The FCC vote scheduled for May 18 is on a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), which seeks comment on Pai's plan and could lead to a final vote later this year. Pai acknowledged that some net neutrality opponents "have called on the FCC to reverse Title II immediately through a declaratory ruling."

But Pai argued that an NPRM is the appropriate next step. "This decision should be made through an open, transparent process through which every American can share his or her views," he said.

Pai said he will release the full text of the NPRM tomorrow. The text of his speech is available here.

Pai did not mention any "voluntary" net neutrality commitments today, even though media reports earlier this month suggested that he wants ISPs to make voluntary net neutrality pledges that could be enforced by the Federal Trade Commission. We described in a previous story how voluntary net neutrality commitments would be far less strict than the current rules.

No more FCC privacy rules

Pai also addressed the future of broadband privacy rules today. The FCC's previous Democratic leadership used Title II authority to write strict privacy rules for ISPs, which were already undone by Republicans in Congress and President Donald Trump.

Pai today said that "[r]epealing Title II will simply restore the FTC’s authority to police broadband providers’ privacy practices." But that isn't necessarily true.

The FTC is prohibited from regulating common carriers, but removing the common carrier designation from broadband won't necessarily give the FTC all the authority it needs. A court ruling last year let AT&T escape FTC oversight entirely because it's still a common carrier for phone service. Action by Congress might be necessary to let the FTC regulate the Internet businesses of mobile and landline phone companies. Pai did not mention this complication.

Pai's speech was hosted by FreedomWorks, a group that Motherboard describes as being "perhaps best known for helping to launch the conservative Tea Party movement. (And also for producing a video depicting Hillary Clinton having sex with a giant panda. Seriously.)" FreedomWorks called last year's court decision upholding the FCC's net neutrality rules "a blow to Internet freedom."

Pai's speech was "rife with hyperbole, inaccuracies, and misstatements," Georgetown Law lecturer Andrew Schwartzman, an attorney who specializes in media and telecommunications policy, told Ars. Schwartzman pointed to one point in particular, Pai's statement that eliminating Title II would mark a return to Clinton-era policies.

"In fact, the Internet was governed by Title II during the early years of explosive growth under the Clinton administration," Schwartzman said. "DSL and dial-up accounted for almost all of the traffic during the Clinton administration. At the time, dial-up Internet connections and DSL were regulated as Title II services. DSL was not moved to Title I until 2005, during the second term of the Bush administration."

The impact of Title II

Under former Chairman Tom Wheeler, a Democrat, the FCC's Title II decision had numerous other effects. Title II was used to require greater disclosures about hidden fees and data caps, but Pai's new Republican majority already exempted ISPs with 250,000 or fewer subscribers from these rules. The FCC was also trying to stop AT&T and Verizon Wireless programs that exempted their own video services from mobile data caps while charging other video providers for the same data cap exemptions until Pai ended the investigation.

Title II was also crucial in ending disputes over interconnection payments in which network operators or content providers pay ISPs for direct connections to consumer broadband networks. Before the Title II reclassification, interconnection disputes were harming the quality of video streaming and other Internet services, but those disputes were quickly resolved once the rules were in place.

More generally, Title II allows either ISPs' customers or their competitors to file complaints about "unjust" or "unreasonable" conduct. All of that will go away once ISPs are no longer classified as common carriers.

Pai said he intends to "eliminate the so-called Internet conduct standard" that was used in the investigation of data cap exemptions.

"The FCC used the Internet conduct standard to launch a wide-ranging investigation of free-data programs," Pai said. "Under these programs, wireless companies offer their customers the ability to stream music, video, and the like free from any data limits. They are very popular among consumers, particularly lower-income Americans. But no—the prior FCC had met the enemy, and it was consumers getting something for free from their wireless providers. Following the presidential election, we terminated this investigation before the FCC was able to take any formal action. But we shouldn’t leave the Internet conduct standard on the books for a future commission to make mischief."

Pai claims Title II killed jobs and investment

Pai said the FCC's case for Title II "was a fact-free zone," with proponents "looking for an excuse to achieve their longstanding goal of forcing the Internet under the federal government’s control." Title II regulation has harmed investment, he argued.

"According to one estimate by the nonprofit Free State Foundation, Title II has already cost our country $5.1 billion in broadband capital investment," Pai said. "And given the multiplier effect from such spending, that means Title II has already cost our nation approximately 75,000 to 100,000 jobs." Pai was referring to this blog post.

Such claims are under dispute. Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) recently pointed to US Census figures that tallied up investments by wired, mobile, and satellite telecommunications carriers, finding $87.2 billion of investment in 2015, up from $86.6 in 2014. (Census figures for 2016 weren't available yet.)

Pai argued that low-income and rural neighborhoods are harmed by Title II because "when businesses cut back on capital expenditures, the areas that provide the most marginal returns on investment are the first to go."

Reversing the Title II decision "will bring high-speed Internet access to more Americans" because "without the overhang of heavy-handed regulation, companies will spend more building next-generation networks," Pai said. Eliminating Title II regulation of ISPs will also "create jobs" when Americans "go to work building these networks," he said.

Pai also said net neutrality rules weren't necessary because "there wasn’t a rash of Internet service providers blocking customers from accessing the content, applications, or services of their choice," and there are no "fast lanes and slow lanes" enforced by ISPs. To remind people that ISPs have blocked Internet content in numerous instances, advocacy group Free Press published an updated list of such incidents featuring the likes of Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon. Pai's speech featured criticism of Free Press, calling it "a spectacularly misnamed Beltway lobbying group."

Web companies and Democrats cry foul

Pai's announcement had been highly anticipated since details of his net neutrality rollback plan were leaked. Net neutrality advocates and Democratic lawmakers laid the groundwork for their opposition to eliminating the current net neutrality rules in the hours leading up to Pai's announcement today. Here are some examples: