It just got easier for Republicans to roll back the laws keeping the internet open [View all]
The Federal Communications Commission chairman, Tom Wheeler, announced on Thursday that he would leave the agency when President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20, a move that could result in a swifter rollback of the net-neutrality rules Wheeler helped create in 2015.
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Now, however, those rules appear to be in serious doubt. While Trump has not said much about net-neutrality — other than a 2014 tweet that called it a "top down power grab" — he has declared a strong opposition to federal regulations in general.
Perhaps more significantly, the three members of Trump's transition team whom he has appointed to advise him on FCC- and telecom-related issues — Jeffrey Eisenach, Mark Jamison, and Roslyn Layton — have all deemed the net-neutrality rules overreaching and unnecessary in various papers and comments in recent years. Eisenach has consulted for telecom firms in the past, while Jamison once served as a lobbyist for Sprint.
What's more, Republican FCC commissioner Ajit Pai, who may be named interim chairman while Trump determines Wheeler's replacement, said in a speech last week that he thought the net-neutrality order's "days are numbered."
Rest at: http://www.businessinsider.com/fcc-tom-wheeler-leaving-net-neutrality-rules-trump-2016-12
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