You bring up a good point that many people might not have realized: relying on the FCC to regulate solely without the backing of legislation will not result in the kind of long-term stable regulations and consumer protections that we are looking for because what the FCC decides to do could change on a dime whenever the administration changes.

I understand that a phone connection is different from an internet connection. But I couldn't think of two more similar industries. Wasn't dial-up,the first real consumer internet delivered through via telephone lines and switches?

The FCC's reclassification of ISPs under Title II does not assume the internet is the same POTS. It's a classification, not an equivalance.

The national infrastructure for the internet and POTS is the same, and has been since the mid-1990s, if not always. Internet PoP sites and telephone PoP sites in the U.S. are housed in the same building, usually in the same rack. The fiber was run in separate trays and they used slightly different equipment for each (OC-48 vs. OC-192 in the mid-1990s), but at least from that point on the primary difference between POTS and internet has been that POTS usually runs through a slightly lower-bandwidth version of the same system. The same people built, maintained, and upgraded the cables and equipment on the backbone, whether it was POTS or internet. It's still run primarily by Level 3 (which swallowed up most of the companies that built it, or the infrastructure and employees that survived or spun out of those companies) and AT&T, and many of the fiber runs across the country are still marked with MCI's logo.

I don't think the FCC is the best place to fix the problems with the internet, but I don't see the "repeal and don't fix" method that seems to be so popular with the Republicans lately as a better way to deal with it.

POTS == Plain Old Telephone Service for those who didn't recognize the acronym

As a communication mechanism I can say that some of the rules will likely apply.

Oh look, more whataboutism.

With regards to this, I absolutely can.