The Federal Communications Commission plans to propose regulating broadband lines under decades-old rules designed for traditional phone networks, and wants to adopt “net neutrality” rules that require Internet providers to treat all traffic equally, and not to slow or block access to websites.

Cable and telecommunications executives have warned that using land-line phone rules to govern their management of Internet traffic would lead them to cut billions of capital expenditure for their networks, slash jobs, and go to court to fight the rules.