Net neutrality is officially back on the menu
Summary
- Net neutrality is back with the FCC restoring open internet rules under Title II, protecting consumers and national security.
- New rules will prevent ISPs from blocking services, limiting speeds, or offering paid priority, ensuring fairness online.
- Restoring net neutrality is essential as internet access is now a necessity, not a luxury, crucial for daily tasks and success.
When so-called net neutrality rules were first implemented by the FCC under president Barack Obama, it was an explicit acknowledgment of the increasingly important role the internet played in our lives. Those rules were repealed in 2017 under president Donald Trump and most tech outlets, ourselves included, considered this a regressive move for anyone who did anything on the web. This state of affairs has been the status quo since the 2015 changes were overturned, but today, seven years later, net neutrality is back.
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Earlier today, the FCC restored net neutrality with a 3–2 vote along party lines (via Android Central). To put that more precisely, what the FCC has done is reclassify broadband internet service as a “Title II telecommunications service.” For those taking notes, that would be Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. Title II regulates the behavior of “common carriers,” which at the time referred mostly to phone companies. It basically allows the FCC extra regulatory powers over how companies that offer broadband internet services are regulated.
In its press release, the FCC lays out a few of the mandates this reclassification gives it. At the top of its list is protecting the open internet. In other words, ISPs will no longer be allowed to block lawful services or limit their speeds. Likewise, ISPs won’t be able to offer paid priority speeds to online services. This authority is at the heart of the net neutrality debate.
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The FCC also claims the authority to shut down foreign-owned ISPs in the name of national security. Finally, it hints that it will begin playing an active role in helping to restore internet outages, citing the harm it can cause to workers, students, and businesses.
Although the restoration of net neutrality will be lauded by most digital citizens, there are those who argue against its necessity. Most post-2017 arguments rightly point out that the internet has only gotten faster and more available in the past seven years. What tends to be unsaid are the numerous quiet breaches of the net neutrality principles, such as charging gamers a fee for faster internet access or the pervasive throttling of video services by numerous carriers and ISPs.
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With today’s vote, those bad-old-days should be behind us. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel told the AP “In our post-pandemic world, we know that broadband is a necessity, not a luxury.” Seeing how everything from banking and entertainment to communication and productivity relies on the internet, we couldn’t agree more.
