The Federal Communications Commission has voted, once again, to assert its power to oversee and regulate the activities of the broadband industry in the United States. In a 3-2 vote, the agency reinstated net neutrality rules that had been abandoned during the height of the Trump administration’s deregulatory blitz.
“Broadband is now an essential service,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in prepared remarks Thursday. “Essential services, which we rely on in all aspects of modern life, have basic oversight.”
The rules approved by the agency on Thursday will reclassify broadband services in the United States once again as “common carriers” under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, subjecting broadband to the same utility-style scrutiny as telephone networks and cable television.
That distinction means the agency can prevent Internet service providers from blocking or throttling legal content, or allowing online services to pay ISPs to prioritize their content with faster delivery speeds. But it’s difficult, particularly in an election year, to say whether net neutrality is here to stay or whether the FCC vote is just another turning point in an eternal regulatory war.
“Net neutrality rules protect the openness of the Internet by prohibiting broadband providers from playing favorites in Internet traffic,” Rosenworcel says. “We need broadband to reach 100 percent of us, and we need it quickly, openly and fairly.”
This reclassification was first attempted by the Obama administration following a lawsuit from Verizon in 2011; The ruling singled out the reclassification as a necessary hurdle in efforts to bring broadband under the scope of FCC oversight. The outcome of that case prompted the introduction of the Open Internet Order of 2015, which not only reclassified the industry in line with the court’s suggestion, but imposed a host of new rules with “net neutrality” as a guiding philosophy. from the FCC.
Two years later, those rules were overturned by the Trump-appointed FCC chairman at the time, Ajit Pai, a former Verizon lawyer. Back in the private sector, Pai mocked the FCC’s efforts. this week as a “complete waste of time”; something, he said, “that no one really cares about.”
The rules established under Rosenworcel are somewhat different than those introduced above. Previous FCC orders seeking net neutrality have been repeatedly challenged in court, giving the agency today a clear idea of which policies will be defensible in the onslaught of lawsuits that will definitely come.
While banning the creation of “paid Internet fast lanes” remains a priority, the reasons for reclassifying broadband are not limited to protecting against the industry’s well-documented problems. predatory practices. The new order also gives the FCC the ability to more closely examine industry behavior; how, for example, companies respond (or do not respond) in the event of widespread network outages.
“Net neutrality” was not originally conceived as a set of rules, but as a principle by which regulators seek to strike a balance between the profit-driven interests of megalithic broadband companies and rights and well-being. of consumers. it is often summarized simply as the practice of ensuring that “the entire Internet, regardless of its source, should be treated the same.”