To establish a baseline for a promised flood of network neutrality comments to the FCC, as of Thursday (Feb. 9), the proceeding was listed as the third-active proceeding in terms of comments with 178 comments in the past 30 days. Universal Service Fund comments and Lifeline subsidy compliance forms are the busiest dockets with over a thousand in each.
At a press conference this week, Senate Democrats urged fans of the FCC's Title II-based Open Internet order to flood the FCC with new comments in support given that Republican Chairman Ajit Pai is a strong opponent of that reclassification.
The FCC received more than four million comments when the FCC was coming up with the last Open Internet order, a stat Dems often cite in arguing that the rules have broad support and should not be rolled back. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said this week that given the new threat to the rules by Republicans, the new public outcry would make that look minuscule.
In a separate press conference this week, House Communications Subcommittee chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said she would be looking to the FCC to make the first move on rolling back Title II, with Congress to follow up with new "principles and definitions and make sure we don't end up in the situation again where we had agency overreach and an agency that decides they want to go off script…"
