FCC Chairman Ajit Pai Faces Balancing Act in Net Neutrality Rollback

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai faces a tough challenge in coming days: rolling back network neutrality rules that he regards as an overreach, without reaching too far himself.

In the highly charged legal and political debate over how the Trump administration and Republican Congress would reverse the Obama-era rules, almost any misstep could be fatal to the effort. Chairman Pai could announce his game plan as soon as this month to start acting at the commission’s May meeting, according to some people familiar with the matter. His timing will be crucial. If Chairman Pai moves too fast to kill the existing rules, he risks provoking a court fight he could lose, according to some experts. But if he goes too slowly—potentially, by starting over with the government’s full rule-making process—he and his GOP allies might suffer politically, as online activists’ protests multiply.