Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg News
“As we've seen, the issues are complex, and the details matter,” Julius Genachowski, the F.C.C. chairman, said in a statement.
The agency is also asking for comments about one of the most hotly debated Internet regulatory issues: special services that offer to prioritize certain digital traffic for a fee.
Those two issues were at the center of a recent proposal by Verizon and Google that generated widespread debate in the telecommunications and Internet communities.
Last month, Google and Verizon proposed a framework that would offer some consumer protections for an open Internet but would allow broadband service providers the freedom to speed the delivery of some digital content for a fee.
The proposal also would exclude wireless broadband from nearly all regulation.
The F.C.C.’s decision to seek further comment during the next 55 days effectively precluded any commission actions until after the Congressional elections in November.
Lawmakers of both parties have accused the F.C.C. of trying to “regulate the Internet” with recent proposals that would give it authority over the companies that provide consumers with Internet connections.
Several public advocacy groups expressed anger at the F.C.C.’s move, accusing it of trying to duck a politically difficult decision.
Those groups have been pushing for the commission to re-establish its authority over Internet service providers and to guarantee the open-access practice known as net neutrality.
“I think it has the appearance of the F.C.C. kicking the can down the road,” said Derek Turner, research director for Free Press. “The job of the F.C.C. is to protect the public interest. That includes making the really hard decisions that may anger some powerful industry incumbents.”
F.C.C. officials said the request for additional comments was tied in part to the Google-Verizon proposal. But the agency was also trying to guard against generating unintended negative consequences, and to ensure that any rules it did adopt would not be thrown out on a technical claim that the commission had not followed federal rule-making procedures.
“As we’ve seen, the issues are complex, and the details matter,” Julius Genachowski, the F.C.C. chairman, said in a statement. “Even a proposal for enforceable rules can be flawed in its specifics and risk undermining the fundamental goal of preserving an open Internet.”
The F.C.C.’s proposed rules on preserving an open Internet were also blocked by an appeals court decision in April that struck down the commission’s legal basis for enforcing net neutrality — the concept that no legal content or application should receive priority on the Internet or be blocked by an Internet service provider.
The commission has floated a separate proposal that would reclassify broadband Internet service under a portion of the Communications Act that regulates telephone and other telecommunications services.
Currently, Internet access is defined as an information service, a category that is lightly regulated under the act. The F.C.C.’s reclassification proposal is intended in part to allow the commission to enforce net neutrality.
Thomas J. Tauke, an executive vice president at Verizon, said the company was encouraged by the commission’s decision to further study net neutrality as it applied to wireless broadband and specialized services.
“At the same time, it remains clear that whatever action the F.C.C. takes will be clouded by legal uncertainty until the Congress enacts legislation that spells out the authority of the F.C.C. and establishes a broadband policy,” Mr. Tauke said.
Portions of the commission’s notice cited examples that could give hints of the F.C.C.’s leanings on the wireless issue. It said that AT&T’s Mobility wireless broadband service and the Leap Wireless broadband service had recently introduced pricing plans that charged different prices based on the amount of data a customer used.
“The emergence of these new business models may reduce mobile broadband providers’ incentives to employ more restrictive network management practices that run afoul of open Internet principles,” the commission said.
The F.C.C.’s notice also raised issues concerning specialized services, including its desire for a clear definition of what they were and whether they would supplant the open Internet by reducing investment on expanded Internet network capacity.
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