Some 282 lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, already have gone on record opposing such a rule-making, and U.S. courts have in the past reined in on any FCC exerting power when there isn’t any explicit congressional authority, and despite the fact the courts recently have ruled specifically on the issue of whether the FCC has authority to impose such regulations, and decided against the FCC.
An attempt earlier this year by Congressman Rick Boucher (D-Va) to get congressional backing for a new law that would provide such direction to the FCC, and which might have been characterized by many observers as quite a decent compromise, failed to get any traction, and odds will be even worse in the new congress.
The FCC is said to be readying regulations that go further than the Boucher proposal did, basically including both wireless and wired networks in a "no packet shaping" regime. That ensures determined opposition by mobile providers. Verizon earlier had indicated it could live with "no packet shaping" rules for wired networks so long as wireless networks could be managed more intensively.
A reasonable person might wonder why the FCC would persist with a rule-making it recently has been told by the courts it doesn't have the authority to undertake.
