FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler confirmed today that proposed rules to replace the net neutrality regulations struck down by a court decision are on track for an FCC vote on May 15.

Wheeler didn't detail exactly what those rules would be, but The Wall Street Journal says it has a source who knows.

"The Federal Communications Commission plans to propose new open Internet rules on Thursday that would allow content companies to pay Internet service providers for special access to consumers, according to a person familiar with the proposal," the Journal reported

This would be the opposite of the FCC's original intent with the 2010 Open Internet Order passed under Wheeler's predecessor, Julius Genachowski. The order forbid Internet service providers from blocking or discriminating against services or charging content providers for preferential treatment. Verizon challenged those rules and won, with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruling that the commission improperly imposed "common carrier" obligations on ISPs without first declaring them to be common carriers.

Public interest advocates called on the FCC to reclassify ISPs as common carriers, which would have allowed the commission to reimpose the original rules. Instead, Wheeler said in February that he would come up with new rules that "fulfill the 'no blocking' goal" and "fulfill the goals of the non-discrimination rule" without going the common-carriage route.

In the original order, non-discrimination meant that ISPs couldn't charge content services like Netflix or YouTube for faster access to consumers. In Wheeler's proposal, as described by The Wall Street Journal, ISPs would be allowed to charge for faster access as long as they don't block or discriminate against specific websites.

"The proposed rules would prevent the service providers from blocking or discriminating against specific websites, but would allow broadband providers to give some traffic preferential treatment, so long as such arrangements are available on 'commercially reasonable' terms for all interested content companies," the Journal reported. "Whether the terms are commercially reasonable would be decided by the FCC on a case-by-case basis."

Companies like Skype or Netflix could pay broadband providers "for preferential treatment on the 'last mile' of broadband networks that connects directly to consumers' homes," the report said. The proposal as described would not address pay-for-play arrangements for the network interconnections that occur outside the so-called last mile. For example, Netflix's payment to Comcast for a direct connection to its network would continue to be legal under the proposal.

It wouldn't be a surprise if Wheeler's proposal does provide legitimacy to pay-for-play arrangements on the last mile. Even before most of the Open Internet Order was struck down in court, Wheeler endorsed the idea of a "two-sided market" in which both home Internet customers and content companies pay Internet service providers.

"I am a firm believer in the market," he said at the time. “I think we’re also going to see a two-sided market where Netflix might say, ‘well, I’ll pay in order to make sure that you might receive, my subscriber receives, the best possible transmission of this movie.’ I think we want to let those kinds of things evolve. We want to observe what happens from that, and we want to make decisions accordingly, but I go back to the fact that the marketplace is where these decisions ought to be made, and the functionality of a competitive marketplace dictates the degree of regulation."

Just today, we described the revolving door between the FCC and the industries that it is supposed to regulate. Wheeler has struck a pro-consumer tone at times, but he was formerly a lobbyist for the cable and wireless industries.

Public interest advocates argue that pay-for-play arrangements are inherently discriminatory toward the content providers that can't afford them.

"[T]he issue is not that broadband ISPs are charging commercially unreasonable rates to edge providers when they should be charging them commercially reasonable ones; the issue is that any charges or differential treatment between a broadband ISP and a pure edge provider (as opposed to an interconnecting network) are unreasonable," consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge argued in a recent filing with the FCC. "A 'commercial reasonableness' rule would change this norm by giving formal FCC blessing to the very kinds of arrangements the open internet rules sought to prohibit."

The FCC's own Open Internet Order from 2010 said that "if broadband providers can profitably charge edge providers for prioritized access to end users, they will have an incentive to degrade or decline to increase the quality of the service they provide to non-prioritized traffic… Even more damaging, broadband providers might withhold or decline to expand capacity in order to 'squeeze' non-prioritized traffic, a strategy that would increase the likelihood of network congestion and confront edge providers with a choice between accepting low-quality transmission or paying fees for prioritized access to end users."

UPDATE: An FCC official confirmed to Ars that the proposal will let ISPs "enter into individual negotiations with content providers."

"The FCC will be seeking comment on adopting Open Internet rules that achieve the goals of the 2010 Open Internet Order in a manner consistent with the D.C. Circuit’s decision in Verizon v. FCC," the official wrote in an e-mail. "The NPRM [notice of proposed rulemaking] will propose, consistent with the Court’s analysis, that broadband providers would be required to offer a baseline level of service to their subscribers, along with the ability to enter into individual negotiations with content providers. In all instances, broadband providers would need to act in a commercially reasonable manner subject to review on a case-by-case basis. Exactly what the baseline level of service would be, the construction of a 'commercially reasonable' standard, and the manner in which disputes would be resolved, are all among the topics on which the FCC will be seeking comment.”

The FCC official further stated that "The NPRM proposes to reinstate the same 'no blocking' rule adopted in 2010, but using a stronger legal rationale." Beyond that, "new legal standard of 'commercial reasonableness' would be separately applied to the broadband network conduct to protect Internet openness."