The political dogfight between the FCC and Republican lawmakers to a rousing start this week as a group of Republic Congressmen introduced a resolution to overturn the agency's proposed net neutrality.
As reported by Reuters, Mitch McConnell, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Representative Fred Upton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Representative Greg Walden sponsored the resolution.
Of course, the resolution faces a number of hurdles before it could ever take effect. The resolution, which follows lawsuit filed by Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) claiming that the FCC has no authority to regulate how service providers run and manage their networks, would need to not only need to pass both houses of Congress and get president Barack Obama's signature, an ardent supporter of net neutrality.
Congressional opposition to the proposed rules isn't surprising. Ever since the net neutrality proposal was passed in December in a divisive 3-2 vote, many industry watchers predicted that it would face various legal challenges. Under the proposal, the service providers such as Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA) and Verizon would not be able to block bandwidth hungry traffic, but would let them have some say in how they divvy up access and how they manage their respective networks.
Representative Fred Upton said in a statement that "I am concerned that this power grab will set a dangerous precedent to undermine the role of Congress as elected representatives of the people to determine the law of the land. I do not intend to allow this to occur."
For more:
- Reuters has this article
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