The deadline for public comments on net neutrality, which was initially scheduled for July 15, has been extended to midnight on July 18.
The proposed rules which were approved by FCC commissioners last May, has inspired protests outside of the agency's Washington headquarters. Critics say that the proposals would lead to a tiered Internet, wherein large corporations can buy preferential treatment in terms of content delivery speed. Tom Wheeler, the FCC's head, has disputed this, saying that he would not hesitate to take drastic measures such as reclassifying Internet service providers as public utilities to keep the industry in line. He has also proposed rules that would prohibit ISPs from preventing users from accessing websites and apps.
According to reports, the large number of filings started to choke the FCC's system as the initial July 15 midnight deadline approached. Kim Hart, a spokesperson for the agency, said that many would-be commenters have been unable to log on the site since then. As of Monday, the FCC has received 677,000 public comments for the new net neutrality rules. Of the total, 207,000 filings were sent through the agency's online electronic comment system.
"Not surprisingly, we have seen an overwhelming surge in traffic on our website that is making it difficult for many people to file comments through our electronic comment filing system," Hart said, adding that the agency has received 470,000 comments sent through email since Monday.
This is not the first time that the FCC's 17-year old comments filings system has failed to handle a surge in submissions. Last month, the FCC's comments page crashed shortly after comedian John Oliver criticized the agency's net neutrality proposals on his HBO show Last Week Tonight. The FCC later denied that the Oliver's rant had anything to do with the downtime. A spokesperson for the agency said that the comments page was disabled for a few hours due to a database denial of service (DDoS) attack.
No matter what the public comments contain, the July 18 deadline would not be the end of the FCC's net neutrality proposals. It is just the first round of comments, and the public has until Sept. 10 to respond to the filings.
