The Federal Communications Commission has once again voted to assert its authority to monitor 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 at the height of the Trump administration’s deregulation push.
“Broadband is now an essential service,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in prepared remarks Thursday. “Essential services – those we count on in every aspect of modern life – are subject to basic oversight.”
The rules approved by the agency on Thursday reclassify broadband services in the United States as “common carriers” under Title II of the Telecommunications Act and subject broadband services to the same public utility-style scrutiny as telephone networks and cable television.
This distinction means the agency can prevent internet service providers from blocking or throttling legal content or make online services pay ISPs to prioritize their content with faster delivery speeds. But especially in an election year, it’s difficult to say whether net neutrality is here to stay or whether the FCC’s vote is just another tipping point in an eternal regulatory war.
“Net neutrality rules protect the openness of the Internet by prohibiting broadband providers from giving preferential treatment to Internet traffic,” says Rosenworcel. “We need broadband to reach 100 percent of us – and we need it fast, open and fair.”
This reclassification was first attempted by the Obama administration following a lawsuit by Verizon in 2011; The ruling pointed out that reclassification is a necessary hurdle in efforts to bring broadband into the purview of FCC oversight. The outcome of this case led to the implementation of the Open Internet Order of 2015, which not only reclassified the industry in accordance with the Court’s proposal, but also imposed a series of new rules, with “net neutrality” serving as the FCC’s guiding philosophy.
Two years later, those rules were repealed by then-Trump-appointed FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a former Verizon lawyer. Now back in the private sector, Pai derided the FCC’s efforts this week as a “complete waste of time.” something, he said, “that no one actually cares about.”
The rules established under Rosenworcel are somewhat different from those introduced previously. Previous FCC orders preserving net neutrality have been repeatedly challenged in court, giving the agency today a good idea of what actions will be justifiable given the flood of lawsuits that are certain to come.
While prohibiting the creation of pay-to-play Internet fast lanes remains a priority, the reasons for reclassifying broadband are not limited to countering the industry’s well-documented predatory practices. The new order also gives the FCC the opportunity to more closely examine industry behavior; For example, how companies respond (or fail to respond) in the event of large-scale network outages.
“Net neutrality” was originally conceived not as a set of rules, but as a principle by which regulators seek to balance the profit-driven interests of megalithic broadband companies with the rights and well-being of consumers. It is often summarized simply as the practice of ensuring that “the entire Internet, regardless of its source, must be treated equally.”