House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday that Democrats would introduce a bill to try and save net neutrality, which was repealed in 2017.
The House speaker said the bill called Save the Internet Act would be introduced on Wednesday in both chambers, although the text which is to be included in it has not been released yet.
Democrats have for some time opposed the administration’s decision to repeal the net neutrality rules that prohibited internet service providers from blocking or slowing websites or creating internet fast lanes, The Hill writes.
The Republican-controlled Senate voted in May to reinstate the rules, but the House did not take up the issue at the time.
Republicans have largely criticized the net neutrality rules for the tough regulations they imposed on internet providers by reclassifying broadband as a telecommunications service and internet service providers as common carriers. But many have deemed the reclassification necessary as it gave the Federal Communications Committee the power to crack down on violations.
The December 2017 repeal, which represented a major win for providers like Comcast Corp, AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc, allowed them to recast how users access the internet while obliging them at the same time to disclose changes in users’ internet access.
A group of 22 state attorneys general and the District of Columbia asked the appeals court to reinstate the Obama-era internet rules, although providers maintain they have not made any changes in how Americans access the internet.
California agreed in October to restrain from enforcing its own state net neutrality law until the appeals court’s decision on the 2017 repeal, and any potential review by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Major tech companies, including Facebook and Amazon, have opposed the repeal of the net neutrality rules.
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