FCC extends net neutrality comment window

The Federal Communications Commission is pushing back the deadline for the second round of comments on its proposed plans for regulating Internet service providers.

The five-day extension for the FCC’s net neutrality plans comes after the commission delayed the first deadline by three days in July, in response to an overwhelming public response that crashed its online comment system.

{mosads}“To ensure that members of the public have as much time as was initially anticipated to reply to initial comments in these proceedings,” the FCC is pushing the deadline back to Sept. 15, it said. The comments were originally due by Sept. 10.

Critics of the proposal from FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler have worried that it would allow for companies like Verizon and Netflix to cut deals to create “fast lanes” for online traffic and provide slower Web speeds for users of other sites. That led to well more than 1 million comments on the initial proposal, the most of any regulatory proceeding in its history.

The outburst caused a series of glitches in the FCC’s comment system, which was designed back in the 1990s.