Mike Snider

USA TODAY

The days could be numbered for Net neutrality under the Trump administration.

Net neutrality rules, passed in February 2015 by the Federal Communications Commission and supported by Netflix, Google and other big websites, prevent Internet service providers (ISPs) from blocking and slowing the transmission of content. The contentious issue triggered lawsuits from the ISPs and drew an unprecedented outpouring of public comments.

Though Net neutrality wasn't a constant topic for Donald Trump as a candidate, he has been an opponent of the regulations, calling the FCC's adoption "a power grab" by President Obama in a tweet in 2014.

The president-elect's latest appointments suggest he'll try to bolster that view, supported by telecommunication companies such as Verizon and others, by reversing the rules. Jeffrey Eisenach, who joined Trump's transition team in October, and Mark Jamison, a former lobbyist for Sprint, were named Monday as members of the "Agency Landing" team focusing on the FCC.

Both advisers opposed Net neutrality. Net neutrality "is not about protecting consumers from rapacious Internet service providers. ... Net neutrality is crony capitalism pure and simple — an effort by one group of private interests to enrich itself at the expense of another group by using the power of the state," Eisenach wrote in 2014 in an article on the website of the American Enterprise Institute, a free enterprise think-tank where Eisenach was a visiting scholar from 2012 to 2016.

A recent New York Times article noted that some of Eisenach's work at the think-tank on FCC issues were supported by Verizon and the GSMA, a wireless trade group of which AT&T and Verizon are members.

Eisenach, who is the managing director and co-chair of communication, media and Internet practice at NERA Economic Consulting, declined comment on the administration's plans.

Jamison has also taken swings at the Obama administration's Net neutrality stance. The FCC has pursued a "unilateral approach" on Net neutrality and other rulemaking procedures that "forces industry and consumers to incur unnecessary litigation costs and to operate in an uncertain environment," Jamison said in an editorial last year. Jamison, the director of the Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida, also declined comment.

Netflix vs. AT&T

The issue of Net neutrality has divided telecom and tech companies for years. Netflix, Google, Twitter and other household tech names back the FCC's need for authority to prevent ISPs from promoting their own content over that of other outlets.

Telecommunication giants such as AT&T and Verizon have countered, saying the agency used outdated authority given to public utilties that is more heavy-handed than needed to oversee the Internet. Their fight has gone to the courts. Verizon successfully had the FCC's 2010 rules tossed out in its court challenge in 2014; AT&T and others appealed a federal court's decision upholding the current rules.

Supporters of a less hands-on FCC see good signs. "l do think the appointment of Eisenach and Jamison is an indication that President-elect Trump is serious about achieving communications policy reform, including curtailing the reach of the agency's Net neutrality," said Randolph May, president of the Free State Foundation, a free market think-tank.

In a Washington Times editorial Monday, May said "It’s undeniable that the Obama administration’s FCC has been on a regulatory binge, adopting a number of major overly burdensome and unduly costly new rules, despite the lack of evidence of market failure or consumer harm."

FCC approves new net neutrality rules

How could Net neutrality be overturned? "The new FCC could try to walk away from the rules. It could refuse to enforce them, try to wipe them off the books or stop defending them on appeal," said Matt Wood, policy director at Free Press, an awareness group that supported the rules.

The strongest action would be congressional, May said, "because it is more durable and can't be easily reversed." New legislation could remove the FCC's oversight of the Internet service providers as "common carriers" and the Net itself as a public utility. The FCC based its new rules on authority from Title II of the Communications Act of 1934.

"Republicans in both Congress and the FCC have expressed their antipathy towards Title II regulation," research firm MoffettNathanson said in a note to investors after the election. "A congressional rollback of Title II was never a serious option in a Democratic administration: President Obama made clear that he stood ready with a veto. With the risk of a veto now gone, a legislative remedy now not only looks possible, but likely."

Analysts Craig Moffett and Michael Nathanson said last week in a subsequent note, "It is likely ... that virtually every major FCC rulemaking of the past four years will be undone."

Record comments

Net neutrality rules are very popular and drew a record number of comments at the FCC — more than 4 million, said Chris Lewis, vice president at Public Knowledge, a consumer tech advocacy group. Perhaps the Trump administration will offer a counterproposal, he said, because many congressional Republicans were in favor of an open Internet but against the FCC’s Net neutrality proposal.

"We think we have very good rules, and we want to defend them," Lewis said, "and if folks want to eliminate these very important consumer protections that are wildly popular across ideological lines, the question is how are they going to protect an open Internet if they eliminate these rules?"

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, when asked about possible reversal of the rules after the agency's monthly meeting last week, said, "I think it's an important thing to remember that taking a fast fair and open Internet away from the public and from those who use it to offer services to the public would be a real mistake."

Wheeler, a Democrat, noted at the time that serves as chairman at the pleasure of the president, could be replaced. "I am committed to the smooth transition," he said.

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