The chairman, Ajit Pai, said high-speed internet service should no longer be treated like a public utility with strict rules, as it is now. The move would, in effect, largely leave the industry to police itself.

The plan is Mr. Pai’s most forceful action in his race to roll back rules that govern telecommunications, cable and broadcasting companies, which he says are harmful to business. But he is certain to face a contentious battle with the consumers and tech companies that rallied around the existing rules, which are meant to prevent broadband providers like AT&T and Comcast from giving special treatment to any streaming videos, news sites and other content.

“Two years ago, I warned that we were making a serious mistake,” Mr. Pai said at the Newseum in Washington, where he laid out the plan in a speech. “It’s basic economics. The more heavily you regulate something, the less of it you’re likely to get.”

His plan, though still vague on the details, is a sharp change from the approach taken by the last F.C.C. administration, which approved rules governing a concept known as net neutrality in 2015. The rules were intended to ensure an open internet, meaning that no content could be blocked by broadband providers and that the internet would not be divided into pay-to-play fast lanes for internet and media companies that can afford it and slow lanes for everyone else.

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The policy was the signature telecom regulation of the Obama era. It classified broadband as a common carrier service akin to phones, which are subject to strong government oversight. President Obama made an unusual public push for the reclassification in a video message that was widely shared and appeared to embolden the last F.C.C. chairman, Tom Wheeler, to make the change.

The classification also led to the creation of broadband privacy rules in 2016 that made it harder to collect and sell browsing information and other user data. Last month, President Trump signed a bill overturning the broadband privacy regulations, which would have gone into effect at the end of the year.

In his speech on Wednesday, Mr. Pai said he would undo that classification.

Mr. Pai said he was generally supportive of the idea behind net neutrality but said the rules went too far and were not necessary for an open internet. The new plan could include only voluntary commitments by broadband companies. He said he would also seek public comment on how to preserve the basic principles of net neutrality — the prohibitions of blocking, throttling and paid priority for online traffic.

Mr. Pai has opposed the current rules for years, and he voted against them as a commissioner. Critics of his ideas for changing the rules say making any commitments only voluntary would pave the way for the creation of business practices that harm competition.

“It would put consumers at the mercy of phone and cable companies,” said Craig Aaron, president of the consumer advocacy group Free Press. “In a fantasy world, all would be fine with a pinkie swear not to interrupt pathways and portals to the internet despite a history of doing that.”

The new policy faces several hurdles before going into effect, including months of comments and revisions. But Republicans have a 2 to 1 majority on the commission, including Mr. Pai, so most proposals he puts up for a vote will generally be expected to pass.

Consumer groups and tech companies have warned of a legal challenge, however. The current net neutrality rules were affirmed by a federal appeals court, which could put an extra burden on Mr. Pai to justify his changes.

Last week, Mr. Pai went to Silicon Valley to meet with executives of tech companies like Facebook, Oracle, Cisco and Intel to solicit their support for revisions to the broadband rules. The Silicon Valley companies are divided on their views about the existing policy, with internet companies like Facebook supporting strong rules and hardware and chip makers open to Mr. Pai’s changes.

The F.C.C.’s policing of broadband companies has drawn greater interest with recent proposals for big mergers, such as AT&T’s $85 billion bid for Time Warner, that create huge media conglomerates that distribute and own video content. Already, AT&T is giving mobile subscribers free streaming access to television content by DirecTV, which it owns. Consumer groups have complained that such practices, known as sponsored data, put rivals at a disadvantage and could help determine what news and information is most likely to reach consumers.

Telecom and cable companies applauded the announcement on Wednesday. Since Mr. Pai’s appointment in January by President Trump, their lobbyists have flooded the agency and the offices of Congress, pushing for an unwinding of rules that they say hamper their businesses. The No. 1 target has been the rules on broadband providers, which they complain have crimped their willingness to invest in their networks.

What Net Neutrality Rules Say Excerpts from and analysis of rules and explanations released by the Federal Communications Commission regarding an Open Internet.

“We applaud F.C.C. Chairman Pai’s initiative to remove this stifling regulatory cloud over the internet,” Randall L. Stephenson, AT&T’s chief executive, said in a statement. “It was illogical for the F.C.C. in 2015 to abandon that light-touch approach and instead regulate the internet under an 80-year-old law designed to set rates for the rotary-dial-telephone era.”

Mr. Pai has been an active figure in the Trump administration’s quest to dismantle regulations. He froze a broadband subsidy program for low-income households, eased limits on television station mergers and eased caps on how much a company like AT&T or Comcast can charge another business to get online.

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Consumer groups have opposed some of his changes, and they challenged the assertions of telecom companies that broadband regulations harm their businesses. They said publicly traded broadband companies have increased investments in their networks 5 percent since the current rules went into effect.

About 800 tech start-ups and investors, organized by the Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator and the San Francisco policy advocacy group Engine, protested the unwinding of net neutrality in a letter sent to Mr. Pai on Wednesday.

“Without net neutrality, the incumbents who provide access to the internet would be able to pick winners or losers in the market,” they wrote in the letter.

So far, Google and Netflix, the most vocal proponents of net neutrality in previous years, have not spoken individually about Mr. Pai’s proposal. Speaking through their trade group, the Internet Association, they said the broadband and net neutrality rules should stay intact.

“Rolling back these rules or reducing the legal sustainability of the order will result in a worse internet for consumers and less innovation online,” Michael Beckerman, chief executive of the Internet Association, said in a statement.

Mr. Pai vowed a strong commitment to the plan: “Make no mistake about it: This is a fight that we intend to wage and it is a fight that we are going to win.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3596726&forum_id=2#33170486)