The FCC will make a decision on net neutrality next month

The FCC is looking to address the issue of net neutrality at its open meeting next month. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler intends to circulate his final proposal to the FCC’s other commissioners so that they can vote on it at the meeting, although it’s not clear at the moment what that proposal will contain.

The Federal Communications Commission plans to vote in February on new rules regulating how broadband providers treat traffic on their networks, agency officials said Friday. The final rules are still taking shape, and the agency has been considering which section of telecommunications law to use for regulating broadband Internet since a federal appeals court in January last year threw out the commission’s last effort. The FCC has been under pressure to change broadband Internet access from a lightly regulated information service to a utility-like common carrier, which would subject providers to much greater regulation. Such a change would allow the agency to ban broadband providers from blocking, slowing down or speeding up individual websites, with some exceptions for telemedicine and other specialized services.