On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission made a significant decision to reinstate “net neutrality” rules, aimed at preventing broadband internet providers like Comcast and Verizon from showing favoritism to certain sites and apps over others.
This decision effectively brings back the net neutrality order initially issued in 2015 during the Obama administration. However, in 2017, during President Donald Trump’s tenure, the FCC rescinded these rules.
The vote on Thursday ended with a 3-2 split along party lines, with Democratic commissioners supporting the measure and Republicans opposing it.
Net neutrality essentially mandates that internet service providers treat all internet traffic equally, preventing them from giving preference to certain businesses or impeding competitors. Public Knowledge, a public interest group, describes net neutrality as ensuring that “the company that connects you to the internet does not get to control what you do on the internet.”
These rules prohibit actions like throttling or blocking specific sites or apps, as well as reserving higher speeds for services or customers willing to pay more.
While it has been nearly seven years since the FCC repealed the previous net neutrality rules, the reinstatement is not expected to significantly alter users’ online experiences. This is partly because several states implemented their own net neutrality measures before 2015, which remained in effect when the FCC reversed its stance in 2017 following Trump’s election.
According to Public Knowledge legal director John Bergmayer, state-level oversight helped curtail some of the worst practices by internet providers.
California and other states went beyond the FCC’s measures by banning practices like “zero rating,” where a mobile provider might incentivize users to use a specific streaming service by not counting related data usage. States such as Colorado, Maine, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington also have robust net neutrality rules in place.
The telecommunications industry has consistently opposed the reintroduction of federal net neutrality rules, arguing that they represent unnecessary government interference in business operations.
This article was initially published on April 25, 2024, and updated on May 8, 2024, to correct the name of the commission responsible for approving the rules, clarifying that it was the Federal Communications Commission, not the Federal Trade Commission.
