A Republican member of the Federal Communications Commission wants multiple investigations into Netflix because of the online video provider's admission that it throttles its video streams on mobile networks.

The FCC, the Federal Trade Commission, and Congress should all investigate, FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly said in a speech today in front of the American Action Forum, a policy research institute. O'Rielly is not impressed by Netflix's argument that it only reduces video quality to help its customers stay under mobile data caps.

"Netflix has attempted to paint a picture of altruism whereby it virtuously sought to save these consumers from bumping up against or exceeding their data caps," O'Rielly said. "There is no way to sugarcoat it: the news is deeply disturbing and justly generates calls for government—and maybe even Congressional—investigation."

O'Rielly went on to say that "the Federal Trade Commission may have grounds to scrutinize Netflix’s video throttling." O'Rielly—who voted against the FCC's net neutrality order in a 3-2 party-line vote—conceded that Netflix did not violate the net neutrality rule against throttling. That's because the rules only apply to Internet service providers and mobile carriers.

But he claimed that Netflix may have violated FCC rules when it did not mention its throttling in filings in which the company supported net neutrality rules.

"A company cannot knowingly make misrepresentations and inaccurate statements before the Commission," O'Rielly said. "In fact, doing so violates Commission rules intended to protect the integrity of the Commission and our decisions. We need to closely examine filings that were made for potential violations in light of this new information. It appears that Netflix made accusations of wrongdoing by ISPs, all the while knowing that its own practices were one of the causes of consumer video downgrading."

Netflix: “We have not made false statements to the FCC”

O'Rielly did not mention any specific filings in which Netflix violated commission rules. When contacted by Ars, an O'Rielly spokesperson said, "We haven’t had time to complete that review yet within our office." O'Rielly hopes the FCC's general counsel office or Enforcement Bureau will also perform a review, the spokesperson said.

Netflix denied O'Rielly's accusation. "We have not made false statements to the FCC," a Netflix spokesperson told Ars. The Netflix spokesperson also defended the company's decision to reduce video quality on mobile networks. "We have zero incentive to deliver a less than optimal experience to Netflix members," Netflix said. "We capped our bit rate to protect consumers from unexpected overage charges due to restrictive data caps on mobile networks."

O'Rielly argued that "many" of the commission's net neutrality rules "were based on the representations made by Netflix and other similarly situated entities, including Google." The net neutrality order's provision on network interconnection payments "was predicated on the fears of anti-competitive peering and gatekeeper status concocted by Netflix," he said. Revelations about Netflix throttling "call into question the entire foundation and rationale of the net neutrality decision," O'Rielly said.

Anti-net neutrality think tanks and Internet service providers have also condemned Netflix in recent days. One lobby group for small- and medium-sized cable companies even suggested that the FCC should impose net neutrality rules on Netflix and other online content providers.

O'Rielly said the FCC should resist any effort to extend the net neutrality rules to online content providers. "The solution to unnecessary regulatory burdens and overreach is not to subject everyone to them, but to reduce them for all," he said. Before joining the FCC in 2013, O'Rielly was a policy advisor in the Senate Republican Whip's office.

Consumer advocates who lobbied for net neutrality rules are generally on Netflix's side. Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood wrote that Netflix should have disclosed its throttling practices from the beginning, but he argued that a company throttling itself has nothing to do with net neutrality.

"While Net Neutrality opponents often falsely equate the two, the content on the Internet isn’t the same thing as the wire that connects you to it," Wood wrote. "And regulating those wires (or wireless signals) that carry content to you isn’t the same thing as regulating the content itself."

Just as a news website can charge people to read articles, Netflix can limit the transmission speed and picture quality of its own video, he wrote. Telecommunications networks are regulated "to prevent carriers like Comcast from interfering with our speech," Wood wrote. "That’s not the same thing as the FCC (or any other governmental entity) regulating the speech itself. We have a regulated phone network, but the FCC doesn’t dictate what you and I say to each other on the phone."