"The agency's decision to reclassify Internet service as a common carrier under Title II... puts the rules on a solid legal foundation," she said in a statement.
Financial industry lawyers have already forecast that regulators will miss the July deadline to put the rule into effect.
Industry lawyers and experts expect that regulators will miss the July deadline to put the rule into effect.
A newly unveiled plan for putting the rule into effect should encourage other jurisdictions to follow New York's lead.
Last July, the F.C.C. agreed to delay putting the rule into effect for another year, setting November 2003 as the deadline.
The Bush administration put the rule on hold and then last week imposed its own, lesser standard of a 20percentt increase.
They also denied the procedure posed a risk and asked a federal court to put the rule on hold while the litigation proceeded.
At the White House, the internal debate had raged since last fall, when administration officials started looking at how to put the rule into practice.
The proposal itself, citing survey data, estimates that banks will have to spend more than six million hours putting the rule into effect.
But after the consent decree was signed, the E.P.A. failed to take the steps required to put the rule in place for all manufacturers in 2004.
