• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, May 11, 2017

Federal Communications Commissioner Mignon Clyburn is calling on people to voice support for the net neutrality rules.

"In just a matter of days, the FCC’s majority will tee up an item aimed at dismantling the open Internet protections that so many Americans fought for and won back in 2015," the Democratic Commission said in a speech delivered at a broadband forum in Los Angeles. "So we cannot afford to remain silent."

Clyburn's remarks come one week before the agency is scheduled to vote on whether to move forward with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's plan to gut two-year-old net neutrality rules. Those rules reclassified broadband providers as utility companies and imposed some common carrier regulations -- including bans on blocking and throttling traffic, and creating paid fast lanes.

Pai's plan centers on reversing the FCC's decision to classify broadband providers as utility companies, regulated under "Title II" of the Communications Act. The FCC took that step after a federal appeals court invalidated earlier regulations that prohibited Internet service providers from blocking or throttling traffic. The court said in its ruling that the FCC could only impose those types of rules on Title II companies.

Clyburn, who voted in favor of the 2015 rules, warned that eliminating the regulations could affect people's ability to access the Web.

"In a world without net neutrality, your internet service provider could charge you even more to access your preferred websites, or worse, block those sites altogether," she said. "Or imagine if your broadband provider, who also happens to own a major Spanish language broadcaster, gives priority access to their website, but slows down the speeds of your favorite but competing website. These are the very real scenarios that could happen, if the FCC’s majority and the big broadband providers get their way."